posted on November 6, 2008 07:39:20 AM new
After the election, McCain staffers are leaking the challenges they had in handling Palin. She resisted their attempts to bring her up to speed before the Couric interview. She thought South Africa was a region of the country (not continent) of Africa and could not name the 3 countries in the NAFTA agreement (US, Canada and Mexico). They describe her family as hillbillies from Wasilla who looted Neiman Marcus from coast to coast. She was authorized to purchase 6 outfits for $25,000 - $35,000 (funded by a wealthy RNC contributor whose jaw dropped when he saw the $150K final bill). Purchases included a $790 LV bag for her daughter. When told to cut it out, she had personal staffers charge an additional $20K to $30K on their personal credit cards and submit them for reimbursement.
I wish I weren't busy scanning and listing today - it would be fun to write a song (to the tune of Beverly Hillbillies' theme song) about the Wasilla Hillbillies!
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posted on November 6, 2008 08:55:48 AM new
I never did like her from day one. And it wasn't because she was a woman. I hope she gets all the bad publicity she deserves and people see her for what she is. McCain made a terrible mistake in choosing her.
***
A poll is not a prediction. It is a snapshot of how people are thinking right now.
posted on November 8, 2008 07:24:56 AM new
I was and am so offended by this womans "politics" and lack of knowledge! To know that she is also so stupid as to have literally stolen from the hands that had "made" her,the RNC and McCain campaign is just unbelievable. In some ways they reaped what the sowed but - BUT when this nation and world are sliding down such a trecherous slope economically it is not only offensive, it boggles the mind.... what WAS she thinking? OH YEAH!! Barbie is a plastic doll... she doesn't think!
John McCain has indeed lived to regret this choice,I'm sure. I can't imagine what his privcate thoughts are about Hillbilly Barbie!
posted on November 8, 2008 08:23:22 AM new
Live by the sword, die by the sword. John McCain prided himself on his instincts, and they failed him on his spur of the moment pick.
I cannot believe that a 3-4 hour conversation with Palin would have changed his mind. He didn't have that conversation.
Once he decided that she was the wrong choice, he didn't put "Country First," and decided to keep on going with her. Shame on him, the campaign staff, and those journalists who were "on to her" for gambling the country's future on this sham.
I don't think she's stupid so much as ignorant, and as monumentally incurious as anyone I can recall.
posted on November 8, 2008 01:10:03 PM new
"I remember having a discussion with a couple of debate preppers,” Palin told CNN. “So if it came from one of those debate preppers, you know, that’s curious. But having a discussion about Nafta — not, ‘Oh my goodness, I don’t know who is a part of Nafta.’
“So, no, I think that if there are allegations based on questions or comments that I made in debate prep about Nafta, and about the continent versus the country when we talk about Africa there, then those were taken out of context,” Palin said.
Huh? It sounds as if she's saying there is a continent named Africa and a country named Africa.
posted on November 9, 2008 09:59:26 AM new
I have to say that I found the idea of Sarah Palin as the nominee for vice president repugnant from the get go. I thought it demonstrated how absolutely out of touch McCain was in even thinking that this woman would attract the disgruntled Hillary supporters. Pallin stands for everything Clinton is against. You can't even compare the two - Sarah is out of her league.
I found this blog rather interesting - it places the blame perhaps where it should be placed, squarely on McCain and his campaign managers' shoulders. It's clear that Palin is so ignorant that she probably did not realize how ill-prepared she was for the office she was seeking.
James Rotondi
Posted November 6, 2008 | 12:57 PM (EST)
The Tears Were Real; Palin Was A Pawn
Maybe I'm just a sucker, or perhaps some misplaced machismo makes me want to defend damsels in distress (even ones who can take down a moose), but watching Sarah Palin tear up during John McCain's concession speech Tuesday night, I actually felt a twinge of sympathy. "Nonsense," my tough, liberal-fighter side sneered back. "Get over it; this is the same barracuda beauty queen who invites poachers to take down wolves from Cessnas, opposes abortion in all cases, and has witches exorcised from her up-do!" The whole slew of anti-Palin talking points blew up in my face.
Still, so did an even more alarming realization: Sarah Palin wasn't a power broker; she was a pawn. Her selection as VP, a move brokered by campaign manager Steve "The Bullet" Schmidt and allowed through by McCain's flimsy hold on his own campaign, was far worse than a mere cynical "political stunt." It was an act of cultural abuse; an exploitation of Palin's own novice aspirations, and an insult not only to the women whose votes the McCain campaign had hoped to sway, but to the millions of "real" Americans to whom the politically and socially naive Palin was expected to be an object of identification.
The later abject tokenism of Joe the Plumber took this gross manipulation of the working-class to new heights, but the real Freedom Fry fake-out starts with Palin. The GOP leadership plucks from obscurity an ambitious but woefully uninformed, inexperienced small-town mayor and small-state governor, whose narrow-minded, backward views are likely less deliberately sinister than just sadly symptomatic of her insulated upbringing, and splashes her out onto the battlefield of presidential politics with little more than an overpriced Neiman-Marcus wardrobe and a gaggle of shopworn, Salvation Army talking-points. Naturally, she got shot down. (Even if she did finally learn to pronounce "Ahmadinejad."
But her public excoriation couldn't have been in the least surprising to those same shrewd political operatives who used her down-to-earth "you betcha" persona as both working-class fetish and human shield. Surely, they factored in the possibility of collateral damage. Evidently, whether it's sending powerless, politically naive and less-worldly Americans into military conflict, or, as in the case of Palin, throwing them as chum into shark-infested political waters, the neo-conservative wing of the GOP, in their Machiavellian, real-life version of the computer game God of War, rarely hesitates to use small-town Americans as game pieces and pawns.
As for her heinous proclamations on the stump, including accusations of Marxism, terrorist affiliations and general "otherness"; be real. Do you think Sarah Palin has the slightest idea what Socialism is? Do you think "surplus value" means any more to her than a special on Chunky Soup at the local Safeway? And do we need to contemplate what the various permutations of the term "Weathermen" might have meant to her before she was rush-tutored at the Republican convention? C'mon: These absurd arguments were shoved in her face; read 'em or weep, kid. That she is woefully inarticulate and misinformed about public policy, history, social issues and global affairs is a given; but, to be fair, so are many, many people around the world who nevertheless figure that running for Vice-President should probably not be on their To-Do list. Sarah Palin flew much too close to the sun, and she got burned; the smoke still hangs in the air.
And yet, perhaps the most pungent aromas still lingering from this election are the squalid vapors of alleged grown-ups like Rudy Giuliani, Lindsey Graham and Sam Brownback bogusly cheerleading Palin's selection as if it were the thoughtful, circumspect decision of elder statesmen. "She's got more experience than Barack Obama!" crowed Giuliani, grinning like a pop-up doll at the Republican convention. Like McCain and many in the GOP, Rudy saw no ethical conflict in shamming the confused religious and moral melting-pot that is the disintegrating American heartland. He detected no hypocrisy in selling to economically downtrodden rural America an attractive if empty symbol of their own unrecognized ambitions, even as his own party--through reprehensible tax cuts for the rich and imperial ambitions abroad -- has made it increasingly impossible for them to reach for the same stars.
Sure, Palin may have courted the VP slot, and may even -- if reports are accurate--have had eventual designs on the Presidency. But on stage in Arizona on Tuesday night, her disappointment palpable behind foggy faux-designer glasses, she appeared less the ambitious political pitbull-with-lipstick and more the kind of human animal we've seen time and time again: a sacrificial lamb lying ruined in the wreckage brought about by a Bush administration and McCain-led GOP who preaches allegiance to so-called Christian values and the virtues of "good, hardworking" blue-collar citizens, but has made their disdain and disregard for--and their eventual disavowal of--those same people abundantly and repeatedly manifest.
posted on November 9, 2008 10:27:13 AM new
Interesting, if not more than a tad elitist. If Palin is ignorant on social, political and historical issues, I place the blame squarely on her shoulders. She had the opportunity but not the intellectual curiosity to be informed. She was politically ambitious long before she was a blip on McCain's radar. She was wily enough to become Alaska's governor. Of course McCain is to blame. He chose her. I can't shed any tears for how his "jerks" mishandled her and took her words out of context. Look at the atrocious lies she told about Obama. The secret service has linked Palin's remarks to a spike of death threats against Obama.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/PoliticsNation/Palin_linked_to_death_threats_against_Obama/articleshow/3691429.cms
Edited again to add, Palin's viscous comments have not only threatened the safety of Obama, they have also threatened her former brother-in-law. A lady who needs to engage brain before mouth.
http://www.abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=6210144&page=1
[ edited by pixiamom on Nov 9, 2008 07:18 PM ]
posted on November 10, 2008 09:30:23 AM new
Palin was out to divide the country even more than it already is and she was enjoying every moment of it. From the first time she spoke at the convention, I didn't like her condescending attitude and my opinion of her dropped even further with each appearance or interview she had because it showed her true ignorance. She must have snowed a lot of people to get where she is today, relying on the intelligence of the workers around her.
She's been whining quite a bit since going back home and it makes her look like a sore loser. Instead of calling others silly names like 'jerks', she would be better off keeping quiet - maybe perch in a tree stand and cool off for awhile before talking to any more of the press.
posted on November 10, 2008 10:30:16 AM new
When Palin incited a mob to near violence she revealed a character flaw more dangerous than mere ignorance.
posted on November 17, 2008 04:32:13 AM new
Now,if we replace the word 'Palin' with
'Obama',would all of you be accused of being a racist?
*
Economic Reform act of Chairman Obama of the socialist States of America :
10 ounces of meat per month,half a yard of cotton per year per adult.
Hellilujah!
posted on November 17, 2008 05:58:03 AM new
hwahwa asks, "Now,if we replace the word 'Palin' with 'Obama',would all of you be accused of being a racist?"
No. Your question wrongly implies a general belief that all criticism of Obama is based on racism. Although racism is a lingering problem throughout the country there may be some people who form critical assessments based on prejudiced beliefs, but not most.
Wishful and magical thinking, but if I don't remember him he doesn't exist 