Why is it we get massive national coverage of VP candidate Sarah’s Palin’s daughter Bristol — including three NYT page one articles in one day – while the fact Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s half-brother lives on a dollar a day in a Third World war-zone hellhole, despite the Obama family’s millions, goes pretty much unnoticed outside of British papers?
Yes, that’s a rhetorical question.
UPDATE: Backlash?
UPDATE: Blowback?
UPDATE: Leave Bristol alone! Can a Chris Crocker video be far behind?
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I liked TexasAg03’s point even better.
Over the weekend, I found a few comments from unhinged leftists who claim that the pregnancy disqualifies Governor Palin because anyone who can’t manage her own family can’t manage the country. Apparently said leftists are ignorant of the antics of Al Gore’s son.
I’ve been disgusted all through this campaign, and keep threatening to vote for the candidate whose supporters piss me off the least. Up until last weekend, Senator Obama was heavily favored on that measure. This weekend, his supporters have me searching for justification to vote for Senator McCain despite McCain-Feingold. They make me sick.
And we don’t hear many stories about Joe Biden’s son, who’s a big time Washington lobbyist.Â
He’s even lobbied for groups who’ve won earmarks from both Biden and Obama. Â
I guess it just doesn’t fit well with the “Change†meme.
Actually, one can find rhetorical answers.
With the MSM in the bag for Obama (cf: MSNBC and CNN), the NYT publishes the major talking points for the MSM and as well for all the
left wingliberal radio talk shows and newspapers across fly-over country.The advantage is that the radio talk show hosts and MSM can always quote the mother of all sources—the NYTimes, the
left wingynews bible that is without error and that dear friends is where the talking points originate for todays and tomorrow’s talking points.This of course is only a rhetorical surmise.
dave,
maybe because Obama is not on the hook for his estranged half-brother, while Palin quite clearly is responsible for her daughter’s well-being. I happen to not give two shits who got pregnant when, and would agree that it’s nothing better than celebrity gossip to even bother talking about it (which some conservative commentaters would do well to remember, given some of the bloviating about the jamie lynn spears pregnancy). However, the two situations don’t seem to me to be particularly comparable.
I do not believe that politicians should be held accountable for the actions of their teenage children or their adult children for that matter.
This has not stopped the moonbats on the internet from chasing the story and it apparently has not stopped the National Enquirer, which now takes credit for forcing the McCain campaign to put out the story.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0908/Enquirers_Perel_We_triggered_Palin_announcement.html?showall
Once the McCain campaign put out the story, of course the MSM is going to run with it. They have to compete with the National Enquirer.
But all of this misses the important question. What does the Palin VP selection tell us about John McCain’s judgment and temperment. Since the anouncement we have found out that:
1) Palin is involved in a abuse of power corruption investigation and from available evidence it certainly looks like she lied about her involvement in her public statements.
2) Palin appears to have been for the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it. It looks like her claim to being against it is very misleading.
3) As mayor of a town of 7000, she pulled in $27 million in federal earmarks over 4 years.
4) It looks like Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence party in the 1990s. This is a fringe party that wanted Alaska to be a separate country in the 1970s, but now wants to hold a vote on whether Alaska should persue seceding from the US. Very interesting VP for a campaign with the "country first" solgan.
Did John McCain know all of that when he made the choice?
Mikeca,
Yes of course McCain knows everything and he is still standing by her as many, many others are including this woman.
Yes of course McCain knows everything and he is still standing by her as many, many others are including this woman.
I hope he knows all of this now.
What I’m asking is did he know any of this before he picked her as VP. It certainly looks like this was a last minute decision and his campaign did not have time to properly look into Palin’s background. McCain has only met Palin once or twice before she was selected. It seems like a very rash decision to pick an unknown VP candidate without a careful investigation beforehand. I think that says a lot about McCain’s judgment. He makes seat of the pants decisions without all the facts on important issues. That is not a quality you want in a commander in chief.
It certainly looks like this was a last minute decision…
Evidence?
Evidence?
Palin’s name was not brought up by any of the McCain staff that talked off the record with the press before the announcement. There is no evidence the McCain campaign sent anyone to Alaska to vet Palin before the announcement. Reporters have asked Republican officials in Alaska and Republicans in the Alaska legislature if they were contacted by the McCain campaign, and they all say they were not. Reporters that went to the local paper in Palin’s home town to go through the archives were told that they were the first to ask to look at the archives.
They may have done some google searches, but there is little evidence they did more than that. Even a google search should have altered them to the troopergate investigation and you would think it would have caused them to atleast call some of the Repbuilicans in the Alaska Legislature.
In other words, no evidence, just a string of suppositions to support your thesis.
And there’s not one single issue in Joe Trippi’s talking points (i.e., mikeca’s comment above), that matter a whit in Palin’s suitability for the job.
It’s all speculation, innuendo, and fluff.
Pretty much the same stuff Trippi used to propel Howard Dean, John Edwards, and Gary Hart into the presidency…
"In other words, no evidence, just a string of suppositions to support your thesis."I would say that the fact that all the people you talk to when you vet somebody saying that they were never talked to is more then "supposition." Â It’s the thing itself. Â
http://www.tighroslin.com/
I would say that the fact that all the people you talk to when you vet somebody saying that they were never talked to is more then "supposition."Â Â
I would say that "all the people you talk to when you vet somebody saying that they were never talked to" is a supposition. Are you in the vetting business? Are you on the vetting team? Or are you just one more self-appointed expert who starts with your conclusion and works backwards from there?
The only difference between the "snap decision" story and the "not her baby story" is that the former is not as sleazy as the latter. But both are based on wishful thinking and tenuous chains of rationalization more than on evidence.
I note with some amusement that (1) the Clinton’s have not been in the news for the past couple of days, and (2) Obama’s name has come up like twice (once when he proclaimed that he was providing millions of people to help with hurricane recovery, and once when he said people’s private lives do not belong in a campaign).
Whether Palin was a good choice or bad, her appointment to the VP slot has supplanted Obamanews for the nonce.
"Or are you just one more self-appointed expert who starts with your conclusion and works backwards from there?"
If you didn’t have your fingers so firmly in your ears, you could probably sing "la la la la" better in tune.
To vet someone is to dig up everything you can find out about them: uncover all the skeletons. Â It means digging deep. Â But even the McCain campaign account seems to describe mostly googling and then giving Palin a questionaire, and McCain talked to her but once, briefly. Â Â
In short, a sloppy, slapdash effort that could have been put together by an teenage intern rather than any sort of serious effort to vet her.
Did the McCain campaign know that she tried to ban books from local libraries? Â That this vaunted for of pork actually hired anactual Abramoff-linked lobbyist to win millions in pork all for her tiny town alone? Â And so on. Â There’s no evidence that they tried to find this out, and the places that hold such evidence say that the McCain campaign never contacted them. Â
In fact, the McCain campaign has lately lamely claimed that they DIDN’T LOOK because, I dunno, the records were in microfilm or something. Â
But no no: you assure us that all evidence to the contrary, they did a real and thorough job… or if not that, then "vetting" must for the moment come to be defined as whatever it was that the McCain campaign did do.
It’s nothing short of amazing to see people so deeply wrapped up in their ideology that they start to make arguments and defenses that defy common sense: as sometimes it seems like even they know as they are making them.  Palin has foreign policy experience (despite having openly denied it herself!) because Alaska is near Russia.  Or because she headed up the National Guard (oops, no, not on national defense/foreign policy issues she didn’t).  On and on it goes… Â
1) Palin is involved in a abuse of power corruption investigation and from available evidence it certainly looks like she lied about her involvement in her public statements.
Here is a time line with details concerning "Troopergate".
2) Palin appears to have been for the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it. It looks like her claim to being against it is very misleading.
Read this.
3) As mayor of a town of 7000, she pulled in $27 million in federal earmarks over 4 years.
Looks like it’s true, but at least "she used this money to build a train system, build a youth shelter, repair the sewer system, and build a transportation hub" (RedState.com)Â Certainly doesn’t sound wasteful, but earmarks are earmarks…
4) It looks like Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence party in the 1990s. This is a fringe party that wanted Alaska to be a separate country in the 1970s, but now wants to hold a vote on whether Alaska should persue seceding from the US. Very interesting VP for a campaign with the "country first" solgan.
She’s been a Republican since she was 18 according to this. And this.
At least she didn’t release anyone’s social security number…
If you didn’t have your fingers so firmly in your ears, you could probably sing "la la la la" better in tune.
Ah, Bad, classy as ever. When you can’t defend your position, insult. That works every time!
And if you could remove your Obama blinders for a bit, you would notice my repeated position that I can’t support Senator McCain due to McCain-Feingold. That makes me the ideal neutral party in this, able to judge that this whole "she wasn’t vetted" meme smacks of desperation.
Washington Post: "Far from being a last-minute tactical move or a second choice when better known alternatives were eliminated, Palin was very much in McCain’s thinking from the beginning of the selection process, according to McCain’s advisers. The 44-year-old governor made every cut as the first list of candidates assembled last spring was slowly winnowed. The more McCain learned about her, the more attracted he was to her as someone who shared his maverick, anti-establishment instincts."
Associated Press: "Culvahouse said Palin’s review, like others, began with a team of two dozen people culling information from public sources. The team reviewed speeches, financial records, tax information, litigation, investigations, ethical charges, marriages and divorces, for a number of potential running mates. For Palin specifically, the team studied online archives of the state’s largest newspapers, including the Anchorage Daily News, but didn’t request paper archives for Palin’s hometown newspaper for fear the secret review would become public."
Anchorage Daily News: "Palin, like others on the short list, then was sent a personal data questionnaire with 70 "very intrusive" questions, Culvahouse said. She also was asked to submit a number of years of federal and state tax returns, as well as any controversial articles she had written or interviews she had done. The campaign also checked her credit. Then, Culvahouse conducted a nearly three-hour-long interview."
"Not done the way I would do it" (since you’re a professional investigator, no doubt) does not equate to "not done". The whole "she wasn’t vetted" meme is really just desperate Democrats looking for slime to fling and desperate media folks trying to excuse the fact that they were caught totally unawares. Which one are you?
RE: Alaska Independence Party
The New York
SlimesTimes retracted their story.RE: The Alaska Independence Party
The New York
SlimesTimes has retraced their story.RE: The Alaska Indenpendence Party:
The New York Slimes Times has retracted the story.
It was apparently Todd Palin, Sarah’s husband, who was a registered member of the Alaska Independence Party. He is now registered as a independent.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hpC0ED5JB9qx1iUsd9xz-dBbwWBwD92UR2C81
The AIP Chairwoman told reporters that Sarah Palin was an AIP member, but then later retracted her statement. Sarah may have attended some AIP conventions or meetings with her husband, but never changed her party registration.
Sarah Palin also apparently addressed the AIP state convention by video early this year, but it was mostly just welcoming remarks.
Thank you, mikeca, for the research. Much appreciated.
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