The View From The Liffey: RNC Day #4
By Brian Lambert
[NEW PHOTOS FROM THE CLOSING NIGHT OF THE RNC.]
With the chant of, "Drill baby, drill!" still reverberating in my ears ... wait, I'm having a deja vu moment, wasn't that the same chant from Day #3?
I haven't decided what gets a bigger roar out of your average Republican, the words "community organizer", "no taxes" or anything related to drilling where no derricks exist today. (Like dogs marking their territory, I'm developing a theory that Republicans like to drill just to let other predators know who the alpha is in the 'hood.)
Anyway, that, as they say in Hollywood is a wrap. They have come. They have roared their approval for a kind of hedge fund version of "Leave It to Beaver", and now they're gone. We have 61 days to decide who is going deliver "change". The POW and the "pistol-packin' mama", or the "community organizer" and the guy "who has never made an executive decision in his life". Some things really are that simple.
As I walked back to my car last night a guy in an apron was out on the sidewalk waving RNC evacuees into the huge tented garden Cossetta's had set up for all that windfall business we heard so much about in the months leading up to the invasion of "rich, white oligarchs" as "The Daily Show" puts it. Like every night of the RNC, Cossetta's giant tent was one-tenth full. (The night before a garage band was up on their temporary stage pounding out Neil Young's "Keep on Rockin' in the Free World", as beefy white banker-looking guys puffed on Rush Limbaugh-sized Cuban cigars. Not exactly what Neil had in mind, I'm thinking.)
Stories are already circulating that that windfall was anything but. I'm guessing Cossetta's will be over at City Hall today demanding their $2500 4 a.m. liquor "fee" back.
It was a forlorn scene. But I needed a slice for the road. There was no one in line. 99% of the RNC crowd had poured out of the Xcel, loaded directly on to their buses and shot off to parties in Minneapolis, Bloomington, wherever, or, judging by the back-up of buses at MSP International, directly to planes home. But there was Sen. Norm Coleman. As I mentioned yesterday I've been tipped that there are some hard feelings in the air because of something either I said, or was said here by "others". I told him our mutual friends, the Wilseys ... of Summit Ave. ... are convinced I've ripped him bad.
"That's what I hear," he said. "That's what I hear."
"It had to be somebody else," I told him. But really, Senator, Sarah Palin? Do you think that act is going to play anywhere other than in the GOP bubble? "Look," said Norm, "she brings a lot of energy to the party. You heard her speech last night, right? There are folks up in International Falls and Warroad and places like that all across the country who relate to her and her life-story." Uh, huh. I don't doubt that. But, you know, qualifications? "She's smart and you'll see, she's savvy, too."
Ooooookay. "And McCain, tonight. How do you give a speech like that with the economy on people's minds the way it is and not lay out a few details of what you're going to do?"
"Oh, he did. He talked a lot about the economy, and I actually thought he got into too much detail."
Jesus, where was I?
"Well," I told Coleman, "I'm still taking Obama by eight points. You want in the pool?" He laughed, just a tad nervously, I thought. "I think it'll be a lot closer than that."
Earlier, after a cocktail thing at the Science Museum with the Minnesota Congressional delegation billed as guests of honor -- I saw none of them -- I stopped by Andy Driscoll's "Truth to Tell" KFAI-FM radio show in Wilkens Auditorium to do a quick interview. U of M Prof. Jane Kirtley, one of those supernaturally articulate types, was plugged into the show but off in a studio somewhere else. She was making the point that the press has to move aggressively past GOP strategies and do substantive reporting on Palin. This means shrugging off the GOP's accusations that "the press" is guilty of "sexism" and "focusing on her 17 year-old daughter", neither of which is accurate. My take was that the press must both make demands for Palin to submit herself to fully open press access like any other candidate and ... this gets into uncharted territory ... make the Republicans' resistance of that an issue, which it legitimately is.
Leaving Driscoll, I ran into a prominent local Republican who repeated the now widely-spread story that Gov. Tim Pawlenty was given every reason to believe he was McCain's pick when he made his hasty departure from Denver last week and that the Pawlenty camp, Mrs. Pawlenty in particular, is royally PO'd. "John McCain, the fighter pilot, f**ked them over," said the loyal Republican.
There's no way Pawlenty (or the Mrs.) will ever say anything of the sort on the record. But you can bet that once the elephant droppings have been cleared from the streets of St. Paul local reporters will be working their gossip/source mills for the poop on that fascinating slice of political history. If they can corroborate anything before election day, that tale of, uh, disloyalty and manipulation could put a dent in McCain's "Straight Talk" shtick ... which right now is looking about as battered as a '74 Mercury Marquis in a demo derby.
I was diverted from my path back to The Liffey by a bad crowd who pulled me over the CNN Grill, easily the go-to destination for roving media types ... since everything, food and booze, was free. John Oliver and Jason Jones of The Daily Show were squeezed into a booth with three women, and actress Rosario Dawson, who, based on her stunning good looks and the executive decisions she's made with regards to her wardrobe is fully qualified to be John McCain's Secretary of State, was milling about, turning both large white Republican and media heads.
If there was a sense of this particular know-it-all crowd it was that CNN's cameras had done McCain a huge favor by finding every person of color in the crowd for his big speech -- clearly contradicting the news yesterday that the percentage of "colored" Republican delegates was down to 1.7% this year, after drawing a barely-proportionate 7% in '04. (The Democrats counted 42% black/Hispanic/others in Denver). And, not that anyone needed to be told after three days working the crowd inside the "X", the Republican male-female ratio was 68%-32%, as opposed to those feminized lefties in Denver who are now operating on a 52%-48% female-to-male split.
The speech itself was largely panned. Once, or I should say, if you got past the image of what is so obviously a very old guy repeating most of the same language we've been hearing for the last years from a very unpopular bunch of guys who have proven themselves both incompetent and corrupt, you'd still be waiting to hear how agent-of-change John McCain, fully supportive of all of Bush's principal economic policies was going to revitalize capitalism to the advantage of middle-class Americans.
The Republican assertion that Barack Obama is going to "raise your taxes" is a card so worn and dog-eared from over-use no one is any longer mistaking it for an ace. We all know who got the candy under the Bush tax "cuts" (which McCain voted against twice before he embraced them to rope in the RNC zealot crowd), and who got/is getting screwed.
While the single most laugh-out loud ludicrous speech of the four days was Minority Leader (and tanning bed pitchman) John Boehner's Tuesday night lapse into psychotic delerium when he declared that only Republicans could be trusted to bring change to D.C., flushing out corruption, beating back the forces of cronyism, sending those big, special interest lobbyists packing, yadda yadda, McCain, with that twitchy, rictus-like grin, wasn't a hell of a lot better. Strip away the character-filler, the POW, military daddy and grand-daddy, the 96 year-old mom, (nothing, oddly about the first wife he dumped aftetr her car accident and weight-gain for the $300 million heiress), the "maverick" and the rest, he was reading straight from Karl Rove circa-2004.
Boiled to its essence: "Because I was a POW, I'll keep you safer from the Muslims ... and the Russians [they're baaaaaack] ... than the community organizer ... who is black, you know."
It was a weird four days. The circus was definitely in town. But the elephants, with the exception of a spritely new female who wandered in out of nowhere, looked flabby, old and tired.
Finally, a ditty, written with the Palin clan in mind by a local media tech guy.
Goin' to the chapel of love
(whoa-whoa-whoa)
Polls all look like
Because my..
Goin' to the chapel of love ...
Let the drilling begin.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
Our guy Bri: "Strip away the character-filler, the POW, military daddy and grand-daddy, the 96 year-old mom, (nothing, oddly about the first wife he dumped aftetr her car accident and weight-gain for the $300 million heiress), the "maverick" and the rest, he was reading straight from Karl Rove circa-2004."
WTF? You don't "strip away" the McCain bona fides, Bri. How arrogant, how boorish, how elitist can one "journalist" be?
Let's see, what you would "strip away" from The Obamasiah?
Nothing, oddly, about the wonderful video of Cindy's refugee relief work, charitable work, adoption of orphans, sons in the military. Or her grace.
Were you too busy looking for the next free booze cart?
I can smell your fear.
Posted by: bertram jr on September 5, 2008 at 1:45 PM
Say, any chance there's a "ditty" you could show us about Edwards?
I didn't think so.
A teen's pregnancy is to be mocked, while cheating on a cancer stricken wife with a nut job, paying her off, and being a rather complete, well, asshat gets a pass - AGAIN.
Remarkable.
Posted by: bertram jr on September 5, 2008 at 2:30 PM
Obviously, you hate Alaska...just as we all suspected.
Sorry, bucko, but the world belongs to people who talk straight, shoot straight, marry young, and eat moose. What else do you need to be president? I mean, if Bush can do it...
LAMBERT: Don't forget that check all Alaskans get from the oil companies. I LOVE that kind of independence.
Posted by: Frogman of Grant on September 5, 2008 at 4:10 PM
From the Alaskan Independence Party Website of which Mr. Palin was a member until 2002:
Q: Would I lose my U.S. citizenship?
A: Depending on the form of independence, several forms of citizenship would be possible, including the retention of U.S. citizenship or dual citizenship. However, considering the moral, educational, and economic decay of the U.S., Alaskans' who hold themselves to a higher standard might very well decide to at least maintain an arm's length distance from a country in decline.
Bertram Jr, why does the husband of a Vice-Presidential candidate hate America and wish to secede from our country?
LAMBERT: Let me imagine bertram's response: "Where is Barry HUSSEIN's grandmother?"
Posted by: Danny B on September 5, 2008 at 4:59 PM
Okay, you answered a lot of my questions, but not the major one. In the lead up to the GOPorama the strib did a very polite family newspaper story on the question of hookers, specifically would lots of them come, so to speak, to town.
Inquiring minds want to know, did the hooker population explode and, since we're dealing with Republicans, what were their genders and age?
LAMBERT: I had a plan to check out The Seville, but frankly, there was so much whoring at the Xcel I really didn't need to search any further.
Posted by: john sherman on September 5, 2008 at 5:04 PM
The demo derby line is fab.
Posted by: Bill Lindeke on September 5, 2008 at 6:12 PM
bertram jr: Do you really want to start the list of incriminations against the Republican white hairs and all their marital fooling around (Rudy), swapping wives, gay mens room encounters, leaving ex-wives on the deathbed (Newt) and trotting out their trophy wives? That would be a very, very long list including McCain himself.
LAMBERT: Please confine yourself to family values/ultra- Christian Republicans and their furtive gay trysts -- with or without crystal meth. Space is limited.
Posted by: Robb on September 6, 2008 at 9:41 AM
As urual your writing is better than your thinking. And don't fret. Obama will win. The party in power always loses when the stock market is in crisis and the economy is in the tank.
But what then? Do you actually believe raising taxes, punishing success and restricting energy exploration are winning economic policies?
I think not, which suggests either they won't happen, or if they do, an economic and cultural disaster will follow. Government may destroy t he bourgeios but it always finds it difficult to find a replacement for them. Think Russia.
LAMBERT: America bourgeoisie is not exacly on life support. Moreover, what Obama-Gore and even the reviled Cintons "get" is that every crisis, like our energy-related economic crisis is a symptom of demand. Whatever other ,promises Obama makes the business about a concerted 10 year effort to wean the country off oil and on to something sustainable and "homeland"-generated will find both enormous public support and create significant new industries (supply). Many of those new industries will, i suspect, be controlled by the bourgeois class you seem so concerned about.
Posted by: Bleuler on September 6, 2008 at 11:31 AM
Lambo:
You're a blogger, right? So where's any concern, let alone copy, about the cops singling out your brethren for physical prior restraint? Dude...
http://www.truthout.org/article/st-pauls-police-protest-press
LAMBERT: I've got a few (deep) thoughts on the "over-reaction" of the police. But I want to talk to a couple people Monday before I make a fool of myself.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on September 6, 2008 at 4:41 PM
I have a question for both candidates to address at the next town hall meeting--
--Since it appears AIP is gaining favor with Alaskans, if Alaska should attempt to secede from the USA next year, how would said candidate address this attempt?
--Like Russia did Georgia, send in the troops and put them back into place, or...
--Like the USA wants to happen with Georgia, just let them secede?
Senators?
LAMBERT: If only the candidates would debate before "moderators" other than GE, Disney, Viacom and News Corp. employees.
Posted by: The Other Mike on September 6, 2008 at 6:10 PM
Sorry to take away your thunder Mr Lambert, but I found someone with better coverage and an exclusive with Pawlenty. Yes -- Triumph the Comic Insult Dog. Check him out on youtube, excellent stuff.
I thought McCain's speech was too long. Palin did a surprisingly good job setting the table and McCain missed. In fairness to McCain, neither he or Obama exactly hit any issue in their speeches. No doubt that they are holding back for the debates.
It will be fun to watch the Democrats wiggle for a while. They are now facing a celebrity candidate in Palin like the Republicans have with Obama.
I'm still feeling good about taking McCain and the 8 points.
LAMBERT: Big shock here, I'm not buying into the "celebrity" candidate "frame". Obama may not have spent 26 years protecting the fundamental status quo of the Washington machinery (right down to hiring on major D.C. lobbyists as campaign "advisors"), but his grasp of issues, his judgment and his composure in an intense competition are easy enough for anyone to see and assess -- if they're inclined to do so. Ms. Palin, on the other hand, has come out of virtual no where. We know the FBI didn't vet her. We know McCain himself barely knows her, and now we see that the GOP strategy is to keep her away from the normal, and I dare say, essential grilling any other candidate takes. McCain's suggestion that Obama was no different than Paris Hilton or Britney Sears was a calculated insult ... to anyone with a brain. But at this point who really knows about Sarah Palin? Really Dave, a near complete, untested enigma a heartbeat from the presidency? Jesus.
Posted by: Dave on September 6, 2008 at 10:11 PM
Good column marred by cheap shot ending.
LAMBERT: I'm the Five & Dime of shots.
Posted by: jed leyland on September 7, 2008 at 11:13 AM
Great coverage and thanks for watching those speeches so I didn't have to. "Tanning bed pitchman" Boehner LOL
LAMBERT: I doubled the meds.
Posted by: MomKat on September 7, 2008 at 6:09 PM
Brian you took my comment wrong. I still think Palin is a terrible choice for VP (I said this a few days ago). I'm merely commenting on her instant celebrity following a 40 minute speech. I get a kick out of it.
From a political standpoint, she did a nice job with the speech and the Republicans have played their cards well. For me as an ex-Republican, the ticket still really troubles me.
All the "conservatives" running over each other to get back on the bus after the one week wonder is just amazing.
Sorry to get your dander up (this time).
LAMBERT: One speech + Victimized by Media = Presidential Timber. It is impressive.
Posted by: Dave on September 7, 2008 at 10:01 PM
Wow, Gallup has McPalin up by 6 pts, a 10 pt upward swing since Thurs, and that means Bri is down 14.
Happy Monday!
And The Obamasiah steps in it regarding "his Muslim faith" and his "wish" to serve in the military, "except that the Viet Nam conflict was over"......yopu can not make it up!
LAMBERT: I'm not holding my breath waiting for you to brave a prediction.
Posted by: bertram jr on September 8, 2008 at 8:48 AM
McCain and Palin are a scary couple, McCain because his forced smiles remind me of nursing home residents, Palin because she is half a heartbeat away with minimal knowledge of the world and a proclivity to seek the answer in Scripture. The huge bump in polling indicates this will be quite a race, and likely closer than the 8% you forecast. That close to half (or more) of the electorate will vote for the McCain team, despite the Bush years, seems to confirm this country is in a permament logjam culturally and, consequently, electorally.
Joe Biden once proposed that Iraq be partitioned or, at least, reconstructed in a loose confederation. I would suggest the same thing be considered in this country. Split the country at the Mississippi (with the exception of Minneapolis), with the Republicans all in the West, the Dems in the East. Life would be a hell of a lot easier.
LAMBERT: Give 'em the Sun Belt. But i kind of like Montana.
Posted by: A Son of Mississippi on September 8, 2008 at 9:19 AM
More trouble in Lib-land:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/09082008/gossip/pagesix/chris__keith_left_out_at_msnbc_128055.htm
Posted by: bertram jr on September 8, 2008 at 9:53 AM
"Do you actually believe raising taxes, punishing success and restricting energy exploration are winning economic policies?"
Bill Clinton put through what Republicans were fond of calling the biggest tax increase in the history of the galaxy, and we got six or seven years of the best economy I've seen in terms of jobs created and improvement in ordinary family income. George the Lesser sabotaged a balanced budget by cutting taxes for the super rich, and the economy turned into a black hole.
Every time I look at a list of the ten richest Americans, Minnesotans, whatever, I see that usually about 40% inherited their wealth. What combination of stellar virtue and ability does it take to have wealthy parents or grandparents?
The oil companies can drill here; there are 62 million acres under lease that haven't been exploited, but they can't drill now because rigs aren't available. Want to drill off-shore, give me a realistic time-line that has a significant amount of oil coming in in under a decade?
Furthermore, OPEC is a cartel, which means its capacity to manipulate the market is greater than anything American can do to lower oil prices. And what do people mean by American oil? Sure there are deposits of oil under the continental United States, but they're not nationalized, so I don't much difference whether the oil is extracted by a company with its headquarters in Houston, Amsterdam or Saudi Arabia. The company will sell the oil on the international market to whoever is willing to pay for it.
Republicans ridicule Jimmy Carter, but he said that we should work on conservation and technological innovation to stop depending on foreign oil. If we had listened to him we'd be better off now.
LAMBERT: The selective memory on Carter is pretty amusing. The only thing the Republicans remember him for is "stopping nuke-you-lure" power.
Posted by: john sherman on September 8, 2008 at 11:10 AM
Make that a "near complete untested HOT enigma" wouldya? Don't try to tell me Hillary isn't looking at those tight skirts and stilletto heels and thinking to herself that the bimbo is going to put 2012 in play for You-Know-Who.
What kind of electorate would put Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency you ask? Same kind that returned W to the White House after he steered the country into the ditch. Same kind that is screaming "drill baby drill," even though, as Tom Friedman rightly pointed out over the weekend, this only underscores our addiction to oil and does nothing to solve the bigger problem of climate alteration. And it's the same kind of people the Los Angeles Times reported on who are stampeding to buy Kawasaki 704 glasses and making appointments for Palinesque updos.
LAMBERT: Are there 59 million of those "kind of people" again?
Posted by: Frogman of Grant on September 8, 2008 at 2:01 PM
The trouble is this... take a guy like Steve Schmitz who runs McCain's campaign. He knows that elections are NOT about issues and substance. Schmitz is responsible for the Paris Hilton ads and trying to define Obama as having a messiah complex. I agree that Obama has a grasp on judgement and substantial understanding of issues in ways McCain will NEVER have but is that enough?
Schmitz bargain with the electorate is that he doesn't care about the truth, he doesn't care about issues, he doesn't care about substance and feels all this things can easily get in the way of winning campaigns. His tactics are to appeal to the sensational, emotional, and fear factors in the electorate.
Schmitz and McCain want to drive wedge politics and issues that will divid the nation in rural vs. urban, anti-intellectual vs. intellectual, young vs. old, religious divisions and all kinds of other stress lines and splinter demographics that will engender hatred and defeat coalitions than could possibly elect Obama.
Yes, Schmitz style of attack is calculated insult but it is effective in the media and through the undercurrent of bloggers who stir up invective and red state vs. blue state hostilities. In Schmitz world that is the bottom line. In their world it is not about issues, it is not about being fair, it is not about judgement, it is not about composure or about the grasp of the issues -- its about winning election at all cost.
LAMBERT: We've been through this before, haven't we?
Posted by: Robb on September 8, 2008 at 2:52 PM
Bertram, Jr.: Lemme' see now, you declined to serve in "the uniform" because...? Oh, wait, now I remember, because your Dad wouldn't let you. All well and good. But then when it comes to lecturing anyone else about serving in the military...shut. the. hell. up.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on September 8, 2008 at 3:16 PM
The magic number is 270, and it is only theoretically about us...
LAMBERT: Let's hope Hillary can work her magic, hm?
Posted by: Frogman of Grant on September 8, 2008 at 3:26 PM
As a proud "hockey dad", I humbly submit the following:
" [Sarah Palin is]... the object of the cultural disdain of a left that loves the working class in theory, but is mystified or offended by its lifestyle and conservative values in reality. If there’s ever been an exemplar of the rural America that, in Barack Obama’s telling, ‘bitterly’ clings to its guns and religion, it’s Sarah Palin. It’s her misfortune to be a pioneer with the wrong ideology. So much bile was directed at Clarence Thomas because he was the ‘wrong’ kind of black man. Pro-life, pro-gun and a down-the-line, if populist, conservative, Palin is a traitor to her gender and thus encounters the sort of fury always directed at apostates... A lot of Palin-hatred is couched in terms of her lack of experience. Fair enough, but there’s a tone of contemptuous dismissiveness about the experience that she does have—fueled no doubt by her career in ‘fly-over country’ so remote no one really flies over it. The Obama campaign is loath to admit that she’s governor of Alaska, pretending instead she’s still mayor of tiny Wasilla, and the outraged commentary in the press makes it sound like the vice presidency is an office of such import that it would be better if the newcomer were at the top of the ticket and the wizened pro at the bottom—just like the Democrats.” —Rich Lowry
LAMBERT: Rich Lowry .... Still delusional after all these years.
Posted by: bertram jr on September 8, 2008 at 5:07 PM
"prediction"?
I have some Manny's coming my way!
McPalin by 10% EASILY....
LAMBERT: "10%". Now we're getting somewhere.
Posted by: bertram jr on September 8, 2008 at 5:09 PM
Hey if wedge issues are so umimportant, why don't you folks just concede them. You know.. so we can get on with the superior economic policies of Thomas Frank, and Thomas Freidman. What did 25 years of embracing Sarah Brady get the Democrats by the way? I keep forgetting...
I take McPalin by 4%. They'll do slightly better electorally than Bush did in 04.
LAMBERT: 108, keep this up and the whisper campaign about you, late hours and the hootch are going to spiral out of control.
Posted by: 108 on September 8, 2008 at 7:46 PM
So...now Obama's walking back from repealing the Bush tax cuts. Fairness isn't important when we have a weak economy. Not that it wasn't a bunch of capricious garbage to begin with. The capital and assets of the wealthy play an important role in the economy huh? What do they call that. Trickle down... supply side?
LAMBERT: That's what they call it. But it needs to more than "trickle" in order for the lesser 90% to be able to ... you know ... "buy" ... i.e. "demand". Is this a difficult concept?
Posted by: 108 on September 8, 2008 at 7:53 PM
Rich Lowry? Ah, yes, there's a voice of considered reason. Didn't he call for a nuclear attack on Mecca in response to 9/11? Such wisdom.
You can always count on Bertram, Jr. to leave no slimy rock unturned in his search for source material to buttress his worldview.
LAMBERT: I wonder how much time Lowry ever spent with Bill Buckley?
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on September 8, 2008 at 11:24 PM
McPalin polling up 12% today, that's 20% down for you....
LAMBERT: That'd be according to the Hannity-NewsMax Poll?
Posted by: bertram jr on September 9, 2008 at 10:26 AM
Are we sure that Michelle Bachmann wasn't vetted by the McCain team for the VP slot?
After reading more about Governor Palin's beliefs and policy positions, it would seem that Michelle would have finished far ahead of T-Pa based on what John McCain finally selected.
LAMBERT: Has Michele ever field dressed a moose, or even a Democrat?
Posted by: Danny B on September 9, 2008 at 1:28 PM
BL - America bourgeoisie is not exacly on life support.
You could have fooled me. So we're not living in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath then? Things are pretty good huh? "Fundamentally sound," eh? The middle class isn't disappearing?
LAMBERT: Bleuler and I were talking more "gentry" than the "middle class".
Posted by: 108 on September 9, 2008 at 1:57 PM
BL - But it needs to more than "trickle" in order for the lesser 90% to be able to ... you know ... "buy" ... i.e. "demand". Is this a difficult concept?
Point proven. Increased marginal rates restrict that flow to a trickle. Decreased marginal rates release a torrent.
Again, its the fairness argument thats completely capricious. We have achieved progressive taxation in this country. The Bush tax cuts heightened the progresivity. Declare victory for goodness sake.
LAMBERT: And economic performance for the past eight years proves your point, you say?
Posted by: 108 on September 9, 2008 at 2:56 PM
Kulak is a good word for bourgeoisie.
Posted by: 108 on September 9, 2008 at 3:01 PM
Gallup.
And Leinfelder, try refuting the point, not the man.
You have no idea how entertaining it is to see just how Palin is affecting the libs....
LAMBERT:
Gallup Daily: McCain Maintains 5-Point Lead NEW
September 9, 2008
John McCain continues to lead Barack Obama, 49% to 44%, in Gallup Poll Daily tracking.
Posted by: bertram jr on September 9, 2008 at 3:21 PM
I think Lowry's writing about Lambert....
Posted by: bertram jr on September 9, 2008 at 3:22 PM
Another thoughtful piece:
"Worrisome for the Obama camp is the momentous effect Palin has had on women. Before her selection, Obama led McCain among white women, 55 percent to 37 percent.
The most recent poll data out last week shows 53 percent to 41 percent in favor of McCain. ABC News called it "one of the single biggest post-convention changes in voter preference.''
"She's not part of the Washington, D.C., cocktail circuit," Steve Schmidt, a McCain adviser, told Time magazine.
"Elite opinion looks down with contempt at people who are not part of their world," he said.
Palin has become a juggernaut. The Obama campaign wants her stopped, and the media -- which has given Obama almost a free pass in vetting him -- is giving Palin a vigorous examination.
On Monday, the Obama campaign released a new TV ad directly attacking Palin.
The ad states:
“They call themselves mavericks. Whoa. Truth is, they're anything but. John McCain is hardly a maverick, when seven of his top campaign advisers are Washington lobbyists. He's no maverick when he votes with Bush 90 percent of the time. And Sarah Palin's no maverick either. She was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it. Politicians lying about their records? You don't call that maverick. You call it more of the same.”
Such political attacks have been backed up by vicious personal smears.
Comedian Bill Maher cracked a tasteless “joke” involving Palin’s Down syndrome child -- and referred to her as a “stewardess.” In the monologue of a recent HBO show, Maher noted that Palin has five children, including an infant “that has Down syndrome. She had it when she was 43 years old. And it looks a lot like John Edwards.”
Also notable was US Weekly magazine, whose cover story featured Palin and the headline “Babies, Lies & Scandal.”
Asked by Fox News Megyn Kelly to identify any “lies” Palin had uttered, US Weekly Senior Editor Bradley Jacobs could not offer any.
Just months ago, the same weekly had published Barack and Michelle Obama on the cover with the headline “Why Barack Loves Her.”
Meanwhile, the media has been elevating minor controversies in Palin’s home state of Alaska to national “scandals.” For example, the firing of a state trooper who allegedly Tasered his own 10-year-old son has been elevated to an international human-rights case.
The latest line of attack on Palin is focused on her strong Christian beliefs. She has been labeled a wacko fundamentalist who doesn’t believe in evolution. (Interestingly, several polls show most Americans don’t believe in it, either. A 2006 CBS poll found that just 13 percent of Americans believe in scientific evolution, and most Americans believe life was created and guided by God.)
A recent Associated Press investigative report was headlined: “Pentecostalism Obscured in Palin Biography.”
Her crime, according to the AP?
Here’s what AP wrote: “Sarah Palin often identifies herself simply as Christian. Yet John McCain's running mate has deep roots in Pentecostalism, a spirit-filled Christian tradition that is one of the fastest growing in the world. It's often derided by outsiders and Bible-believers alike.”
CNN on Monday was out with a similar “expose,” citing her former Alaskan pastor as saying Palin wanted to hide her Pentecostal roots.
Why? CNN claims she may be embarrassed that Pentecostals “speak in tongues.”
Though Palin has clearly demonstrated that her faith does not mix with her public service, it’s a major problem for the media.
It should be remembered that this is the same media that ignored Obama’s involvement with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. until video clips of his pastor condemning the United States made it onto YouTube. The media continues to largely ignore the fact Obama won’t admit he was raised a Muslim and later converted to Christianity.
The bias against Palin has become so apparent that even some in the major media are taking notice.
During the Republican National Convention last Wednesday, Palin mentioned how the media was covering her, and angry Republicans began screaming “NBC, NBC, NBC.”
NBC News, once considered the gold standard of broadcast news, has become so closely associated with the Obama campaign that it even replaced veteran news anchors for the two conventions with Democratic pundits Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews.
The network’s slanted coverage of the GOP became such an embarrassment that the network this past Sunday removed both Olbermann and Matthews as its election news anchors.
The pro-Obama bias has not only affected Palin and the GOP. During one Democrat debate earlier this year, Sen. Hillary Clinton referenced a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that showed CNN moderators bending over backwards to help Obama.
Hillary may have the last laugh as the Republicans, with Palin leading the charge, are stealing the women vote – a bloc Hillary solidly owned and one she could have brought home to the Democratic Party on Election Day."
Ah, what a country!
Posted by: bertram jr on September 9, 2008 at 3:30 PM
BL - And economic performance for the past eight years proves your point, you say?
In your effort to be flip, you're straying from the point...again....and it's important because Obama has just confirmed the importance of bourgeoisie capital.
I think we would agree the underperformance of the economy, such as it is, is related to other Bush policies not related to taxation.
LAMBERT: Uh, we would NOT agree that Bush tax policies have no role in The Great Under-performance. Maybe he'd have a position to argue from if his economic policies generated sufficient job growth to create competitive wage increases. But you don't separate that failure from the fundamental decision to put every egg in the same 1% basket.
Posted by: 108 on September 9, 2008 at 3:56 PM
Brian, if tax hikes are a job grower, why has Obama backed away from them?
Bush did not put every egg in the same 1% basket. By all means, either go ahead and literally demonstrate that he did, or acknolwedge your hyberbole.
LAMBERT: This "backing away" thing ... Obama was on TV last night reiterating the same plan he's pitched for months. You're conflating erroneously, my friend.
Posted by: 108 on September 9, 2008 at 6:49 PM
Bri, you're obviously conflicted.
You rail against the "1%-ers" yet you also detest the "common man / woman" as embodied by Palin...
Really, man, what gives?
I'm concerned.
LAMBERT: Only over-armed shut-ins regard Sarah Palin as "common".
Posted by: bertram jr on September 10, 2008 at 9:35 AM
More republy foot-in-mouth issues...
Karl Rove on "Face the Nation" last month knocked Democratic Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia for his inexperience when Kaine was thought a frontrunner as Obama's running mate. Kaine, Rove said, has "been a governor for three years. He's been able, but undistinguished. I don't think people could really name a big, important thing that he's done. He was mayor of the 105th-largest city in America. And, again, with all due respect to Richmond, Va.; it's smaller than Chula Vista, Calif.; Aurora, Colo.; Mesa or Gilbert, Arizona; North Las Vegas, or Henderson, Nevada. It's not a big town. "If he were to pick Governor Kaine, it would be an intensely political choice, where he's said, 'You know what? I'm really not first and foremost concerned with, is this person capable of being president of the United States?'" Rove said.
LAMBERT: Obviously none of this matters in the least to those Palin holds in her thrall. But the Dems could do worse than drop in the week's worth of "then and now" video bites Jon Stewart ran all last week.
Posted by: Pierce County Politician on September 10, 2008 at 12:02 PM
Lipstick on a pig? I'd be more comfortable knowing they were at least up to the level of pigs.
LAMBERT: Remember when FoxNews declared they "owned" the words "fair" and "balanced". Apparently the McCain team believes they own either "lipstick" or "pig", or maybe both.
Posted by: Pierce County Politician on September 10, 2008 at 12:42 PM
Let's be honest.
Obama spewed forth what is probably the first real, certifiable nail in his ever closing coffin.
The man is obviously clueless, and now appears to be increasingly desperate.
You are down nearly 20 points from your own "prediction".
As my guy Bob Z. said "How does it feel?"
Please comment on faux-hetero "communicator" Oprah's racist and contradictory booking "policy" as it regards Palin.
If he's black, he'll be back?
Posted by: bertram jr on September 10, 2008 at 12:56 PM
"Common", meaning as opposed to the priggish hypocrisy and elitism that you and your types espouse.
Ms. Palin, the newly annointed VPMILF, is indeed anything but common.
In fact, her credentials surpass those of that guy on the top of your ticket, Barry-what's-his-name again.
Posted by: bertram jr on September 10, 2008 at 1:00 PM