Sarah Failin'

[88Mariner]

i couldn't make this up myself. I had to find a republican to slip on freud.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpXcQjNMG1M[/youtube]

i'm going to use this thread as a placeholder for all funny things Sarah. cool.

[DIDI]

Re: Sarah Failin'

She is so awful.

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

not awful, just inexperienced and completely lacking on the things that count right now.

i could actually see myself voting for her (grudgingly excepting to the theocratic beliefs she holds), in due time.

it just sucks that people like dana perino have more experience than she does.....

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3767/palin-involved-in-ousting-scandals-from-the-start

If a small-town mayor ever ruled with an iron fist — it was Palin. Eleven days after taking office in 1996, she mailed letters to each of the city’s top managers requesting that they resign as a test of loyalty.

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13098.html

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.

this was two weeks ago. I wonder how Hannity will handle this?

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/02/palin_slashed_funding_to_help.html

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/us...in&oref=slogin (a questionable place to print this from what seems like a legit source on the inside)

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.

well if we go to war with iran and russia, i hope he does a little more homework.

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents. 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%.

she'll fit right in.

http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3671/the-reform-candidate

[Localizer]

Re: Sarah Failin'

Sarah I believe is just the mask. The real person behind the VP is probably her husband and is probably the person we need to be scrutinizing more closely. If she's clean, he may not be, and it's the perfect cover to run operations behind her.

Alaska's 'First Dude'
Keeps Things Low-Key

By JIM CARLTON
September 3, 2008; Page A5


WASILLA, Alaska -- With all the controversies swirling around the meteoric rise of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, there has been one constant by her side: her unassuming husband.


As Gov. Palin told the world when Arizona Sen. John McCain introduced her as his running mate Friday, she and her husband were celebrating their 20th wedding anniversary that day. "I had promised Todd a little surprise for the anniversary present, and hopefully he knows that I did deliver," the beaming governor said as her husband stood by smiling.
In Alaska, Gov. Palin, 44 years old, jokingly refers to the 43-year-old Mr. Palin as the "first dude." But his role is anything but frivolous. Around the Statehouse in Juneau, some critics dub him the "shadow governor." He is copied on some of Gov. Palin's official correspondence, and allegedly was involved in an effort to get a state trooper fired after the trooper reportedly threatened Gov. Palin's family.


That episode, involving Gov. Palin's former brother-in-law, is now the subject of an ethics investigation into the governor and her husband by the state legislature. The investigation is scheduled to be completed before the election.


"One question keeps surfacing over and over again; Why does the governor's husband, Todd Palin, appear to hold so much power?" Andrew Halcro, an Anchorage rental-car executive who ran for governor against Mrs. Palin in the 2006 Republican primary, recently wrote in a blog he uses to criticize the Republican governor.


Neither the governor nor her husband could be reached to comment. Sharon Leighow, the governor's deputy press secretary, said Mr. Palin does pass along to his wife or her staffers some of the correspondence with which he is "inundated," but that he doesn't attend meetings or play executive roles.


An oil-field production operator on Alaska's North Slope, Mr. Palin has taken months off work to help manage a household of five children. The disclosure by Mr. Palin and his wife Monday that their 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant out of wedlock put the family in the spotlight again. Mr. Palin also has traveled around the state to promote vocational education, which as part Yupik Eskimo he considers a way to help Alaska's native villages.


When a Wall Street Journal reporter spent two days following Gov. Palin in June, Mr. Palin kept a low profile, mostly tending to his youngest son, Trig, as the governor attended events in the Anchorage area. Often, female bystanders asked him to pose for photos.


The only time he became animated was over the topic of Alaska's giant North Slope oil fields, where he has worked for nearly 20 years. In particular, he marveled at how much natural gas has to be pumped back into the ground or "flared" off because there isn't yet a pipeline to take it to markets in the lower 48 states. "You can see the flares for miles," Mr. Palin said at the time.


Alaska's first gentleman has emerged as a key player in the "Troopergate" scandal. An investigator for the legislature is looking into whether Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan lost his job in July after being pressured by Gov. Palin, her husband and her staff to fire Mike Wooten, a state trooper with whom the Palins had feuded during a messy divorce from the governor's sister. Gov. Palin says there was no pressure and that Mr. Monegan's removal was unrelated to her personal affairs.


According to a complaint that Mrs. Palin filed against Mr. Wooten in 2005, the trooper threatened to "bring Sarah Palin down" after Mr. Palin advised him to "act civily [sic] and with maturity" during the divorce. Later that year, Mr. Palin also gave a statement to troopers investigating the charges of misconduct that his wife leveled against Mr. Wooten and also warned the public-safety commissioner about Mr. Wooten after Gov. Palin's election victory.


Mr. Palin has told Alaska reporters he did so to alert Mr. Monegan of an alleged death threat against his family by the trooper. Ms. Leighow of the governor's office said Mr. Palin went to the commissioner at the request of Gov. Palin's security detail.
Yesterday, new documents filed by Gov. Palin allege Mr. Wooten continued to harass her and her family as recently as this summer.


The Palins married after meeting in the same Wasilla High School class, where both starred in basketball. Born to a fishing family in remote Dillingham, Alaska, Mr. Palin had moved to Wasilla in his senior year and quickly hit it off with the future governor.
As Mr. Palin has celebrated his wife's political victories, she has returned the favor by cheering on her husband in his chief hobby: snow-machine racing. He is a four-time winner of the Tesoro Iron Dog, a grueling, 2,000-mile race over ice and snow.


Mr. Palin also takes fishing seriously. He once left his wife onshore to tend to some fingers she broke on the boat so he could get right back out, according to the 2008 book.


Frequently, Mr. Palin appears at public events with his wife. On June 18, the couple drove from Wasilla to Kenai, about 200 miles away, so the governor could sign a tourism bill. After a brief ceremony in a converted fish cannery, Ms. Palin met with a local resident, Taryn Armstrong, who told her about the problem of contractors having to import labor from the lower 48 states. The governor pointed toward her husband, who was holding Trig, and said, "Talk to Todd about that," a nod to his interest in getting more native Alaskans trained for that work.

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1vPYbRB7k[/YOUTUBE]

yup. you definitely should have your finger on the 'nuke everyone' button.

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

I think this Sam Harris article is thoughtful:

[COLOR=#333333! important]She's not qualified to be president, and in picking her, McCain shows that he has little respect for the presidency.[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#999999! important]By Sam Harris
September 3, 2008 [/COLOR]
» Discuss Article (962 Comments)

So let us ask the question that should be on the mind of every thinking person in the world at this moment: If John McCain becomes the 44th president of the United States, what are the odds that a blood clot or falling object will make Sarah Palin the 45th?

The actuarial tables on the Social Security Administration website suggest that there is a better than 10% chance that McCain will die during his first term in office. Needless to say, the Reaper's scything only grows more insistent thereafter. Should President McCain survive his first term and get elected to a second, there is a 27% chance that Palin will become the first female U.S. president by 2015. If we take into account McCain's medical history and the pressures of the presidency, the odds probably increase considerably that this bright-eyed Alaskan will become the most powerful woman in history.



As many people have noted, placing Palin on the ticket has made these final months of the already overlong 2008 campaign much more interesting. Is Palin remotely qualified to be president of the United States? No. But that's precisely what is so interesting. McCain not only has thrown all sensible concerns about good governance aside merely to pander to a sliver of female and masses of conservative Christian voters, he has turned this period of American history into an episode of high-stakes reality television: Don't look now, but our cousin Sarah just became leader of the free world! Tune in next week and watch her get sassy with Pakistan!

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the "Who would you like to have a beer with?" poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages -- and loses -- both necessary and unnecessary wars.


McCain has so little respect for the presidency of the United States that he is willing to put the girl next door (soon, too, to be a grandma) into office beside him. He has so little respect for the average American voter that he thinks this reckless and cynical ploy will work.

And it might. Palin's nomination has clearly excited Christian conservatives, and it may entice a few million gender-obsessed fans of Hillary Clinton to vote entirely on the basis of chromosomes. Throw in a few million more average Americans who will just love how the nice lady smiles, and 2009 could be a very interesting year.

Tune in next week and watch cousin Sarah fuss with our nuclear arsenal ... .

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-harris3-2008sep03,0,5745350.story

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

http://www.librarian.net/stax/2366/sarah-palin-vp-nominee/

[Former Wasilla mayor] 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.” The librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire her for not giving “full support” to the mayor.

Don't support Palin? That's a bannin'.....

[88Mariner]

Re: Sarah Failin'

Sometimes you catch a bit of a news report or a piece of text from an article that beautifully frames what a phony game all this convention business really is. Happened to me this evening while reading the Washington Post, with this passage:

Sitting around a dining room table, the McCain team has talked to her about Iraq, energy and the economy but has focused on what she should say in her speech, struggling almost as hard as she has to prepare for what will be, along with a debate in October, her main opportunity to shape the way she is viewed by voters. Not anticipating that McCain would choose a woman as his running mate, the speech that was prepared in advance was "very masculine," according to campaign manager Rick Davis, and "we had to start from scratch."

Few politicians write their own speeches anymore. But even my jaded eyes bugged at the idea that McCain’s campaign had already written tonight’s speech before they knew who the running mate would be.

nice catch by radley balko: http://www.theagitator.com/

[shosh]

Re: Sarah Failin'

[YOUTUBE]EpGH02DtIws[/YOUTUBE]

[shosh]

Re: Sarah Failin'

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13089.html

Pushing back aggressively against charges of lax or hasty vetting, the McCain campaign disclosed Tuesday that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was one of six finalists for running mate who filled out a 70-question form that included detailed personal, professional and financial probing.

The campaign says the form included such detailed questions as: Have you been faithful in your marriage? Have you ever paid for sex? Have you ever downloaded pornography? Have you ever used or purchased drugs?

“Anybody who says that she wasn’t completely vetted is completely wrong,” a McCain campaign official said. “Everything that has come out over the last couple of days is information that we already knew — that came during this vetting process. The bottom line is that John McCain believes she is a qualified executive who’s able to fill the role of the vice president.” Palin, unveiled on Friday as vice presidential running mate for the Arizona senator, has been in a media storm since her announcement Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant. The daughter plans to keep the baby and marry the father, the announcement says.

As part of the McCain staff’s effort to fight a media storm, official campaign blogger Michael Goldfarb labeled as “fiction” a front-page New York Times story questioning the Palin vetting process.

Palin had been researched thoroughly even earlier than the questionnaire stage, as part of a group of 21 semifinalists who were not informed of their status but who were researched from public records.

“The fact of the matter is she was vetted over the course of about four to five months," the McCain official said, "in a vetting process that was read by a former Reagan White House counsel,” Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr.

“It included a comprehensive group of researchers and investigators prepared background memos that included information in regards to all media coverage pertaining to her, her political positions, her issues, a review of finance documents, a credit check, a personal interview with the candidate, and a questionnaire,” the official said.