The Democrat Thread

HuskyCaucasian · September 28, 2008

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 27, 2008 -> 07:39 PM)

And based on him saying that with a straight face, I conclude "David Plouffe is a terrific liar".

:lolhitting

Well, CSPN re-aired an Alaskan debate recently. I watched it for a while. She did a pretty good job. But there wasnt much "substance" in the debate because there isnt much "substance" in Alaska. I think on a national stage talking about the complexities of the economy and foreign policy, she wont stand a chance against Biden. She'll have mostly staged answers with vague references to reform and bridges to no where.

Edited September 28, 2008 by Athomeboy_2000

Balta1701 · September 28, 2008

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Sep 27, 2008 -> 04:49 PM)

Well, CSPN re-aired an Alaskan debate recently. I watched it for a while. She did a pretty good job. But there wasnt much "substance" in the debate because there isnt much "substance" in Alaska. I think on a national stage talking about the complexities of the economy and foreign policy, she wont stand a chance against Biden. She'll have mostly staged answers with vague references to reform and bridges to no where.

Well, the worry here for our side is frankly the "Soft bigotry of low expectations".

Right now, after her performance against Couric and Gibson, if she comes out and speaks in clear, coherent, complete sentences, she'd outperform expectations by a lot and that would count as a positive for her. Quite literally, at this point, most people wouldn't be surprised if half her answers were total gibberish. That's an advantage for her because if she can be better than that, she can pull together some positive press.

The question is...can she actually do better than how she's done the last couple times out, which have been unmitigated disasters?

lostfan · September 28, 2008

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 27, 2008 -> 09:02 PM)

Well, the worry here for our side is frankly the "Soft bigotry of low expectations".

Right now, after her performance against Couric and Gibson, if she comes out and speaks in clear, coherent, complete sentences, she'd outperform expectations by a lot and that would count as a positive for her. Quite literally, at this point, most people wouldn't be surprised if half her answers were total gibberish. That's an advantage for her because if she can be better than that, she can pull together some positive press.

The question is...can she actually do better than how she's done the last couple times out, which have been unmitigated disasters?

This is so true. My friend and I were talking about this yesterday and we were playing a game. I ask a reporter-style question, she replies with a Sarah Palin answer. So her answers would sound something like "Well, actually I am from Chicago, and when I go to the lakefront I can see Michigan from my house. Michigan borders Canada, which is basically Latin America, so along with my multicultural background and the fact that I have friends of different races, I believe my foreign policy credentials are strong. Also, we need to make sure we keep taxes low so people can afford healthcare." Her answer made slightly less sense than her actual answer in response to the bailout question.

DrunkBomber · September 28, 2008

QUOTE (BigSqwert @ Sep 27, 2008 -> 07:37 PM)

Who's punishing who? It's the GOP and McCain surrogates that have labeled Obama as the elitist. The same Obama that was raised by his single mom who was on food stamps. The same Obama that paid his own way through college and just recently paid off his student loans.

My point was that what a bunch of hypocrites they are when it's McCain who owns so many homes he forgets how many he has and owns a fleet of vehicles and his own private jet. The audacity to label Obama as the elitist is laughable.

Ya, and Obamas camp continues to try to say McCain cant relate to anybody because he married into money and his wife has investment properties. DO you think the GOP is the only camp being hypocritical or something? Seriously, Obama lives in a multimillion dollar mansion that he got for 300k below asking because of convicted felon Tony Rezco and he is bringing up real estate to prove a point? For the record, the first time I heard Obama being labeled as an elitist, it was by his own party mate, Hillary Clinton.

BigSqwert · September 28, 2008

And it just gets scarier by the moment.

Palin told him that "dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time," Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said "she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks,"

lostfan · September 28, 2008

Not sure where exactly to put this but it's awesome. Saturday Night Live's parody of Palin's Couric interview. Man, SNL has been money on the political parodies this year.

bmags · September 28, 2008

I find it hard to believe Tina Fey fought being Palin, I think when it's all over this will be the character she's remembered for. Also, I think it's funny how SNL just used Palin's exact answers sometimes (with some funny lines put in), it really drives home the point.

BigSqwert · September 29, 2008

What Does CBS Have?

Buried near the end of today's column from Howard Kurtz, where he is talking about Sarah Palin's disastrous interview with Katie Couric, was this interesting tidbit:

And the wor
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t may be yet to come for Palin;
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ay CB
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two more re
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on tape that will li
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ely prove embarra
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ing.

Given the excruciatingly bad answers she gave on Alaska's proximity to Russia giving her foreign policy experience, or her take on the $700 billion bailout, it's hard to believe that there's anything worse...isn't it? But the important question is, what is CBS waiting for? Why haven't they aired the entire tape?

clyons · September 29, 2008

After all the lumps CBS took last election regarding the Dan Rather/George Bush militatry service fiasco, I find it hard to believe it would risk further criticism of its "neutrality" by holding back on more Palin quotes and releasing them in pieces. I guess we'll see.

Rex Kickass · September 29, 2008

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Sep 29, 2008 -> 11:00 AM)

After all the lumps CBS took last election regarding the Dan Rather/George Bush militatry service fiasco, I find it hard to believe it would risk further criticism of its "neutrality" by holding back on more Palin quotes and releasing them in pieces. I guess we'll see.

Maybe there are no real plans to release them.

clyons · September 29, 2008

Maybe, but that would be bad journalism in the other direction. Any candidate bombing that horribly with a network news anchor could and should be aired as breaking news. Not withheld to spare a condidate embarassment or saved like a pine-tar bat.

BigSqwert · September 29, 2008

Hypocrisy example #256:

Weeks after John McCain mocked Barack Obama for raising money in Hollywood "with his celebrity friends," the Arizona Senator is slated to join his wife for a fundraiser on Los Angeles' Avenue of the Stars this Wednesday.

The McCain-Palin Victory California Leadership team is sponsoring the October 1 event at the Century Plaza Hyatt Regency in L.A. Supporters who bundle at least $250,000 receive entrance to a host committee dinner and private reception; others can attend the general reception for $1,000 per person (or $2,500 per person for a limited edition "McCain-Palin CA" lapel pin).

The event comes two weeks after McCain chided Obama for fundraising in southern California. "He talked about siding with the people just before he flew off for a fundraiser in Hollywood with Barbra Streisand and his celebrity friends," McCain told a crowd in Ohio. "Let me tell you, my friends, there's no place I'd rather be than right here with the working men and women of Ohio."

bmags · September 29, 2008

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Sep 29, 2008 -> 04:00 PM)

After all the lumps CBS took last election regarding the Dan Rather/George Bush militatry service fiasco, I find it hard to believe it would risk further criticism of its "neutrality" by holding back on more Palin quotes and releasing them in pieces. I guess we'll see.

releasing interviews in pieces is all the rage now because it peaks interest over a number of shows rather than just one large audience for one. They said they'll air the rest before the debates.

Of course, Palin will score points for any answer that she can make in a complete sentence.

I'd like a Joe Biden Quip like this: Any Sarah Palin campaign sentence goes like this: a noun, a verb, a noun, a noun, a verb, alaska, adverb adverb, noun noun article noun verb fragment.

Balta1701 · September 29, 2008

I didn't want to stick this in the bailout thread, but honestly, from the perspective of a person who does not want to see that thing pass, this is spectacular.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.

The rush to claim he had engineered a victory now looks like a strategic blunder that will prolong the McCain’s campaign’s difficulty in finding a winning message on the economy.

Shortly before the vote, McCain had bragged about his involvement and mocked Sen. Barack Obama for staying on the sidelines.

“I've never been afraid of stepping in to solve problems for the American people, and I'm not going to stop now,” McCain told a rally in Columbus, Ohio. “Sen. Obama took a very different approach to the crisis our country faced. At first he didn't want to get involved. Then he was monitoring the situation.”

McCain, grinning, flashed a sarcastic thumbs up.

“That's not leadership. That's watching from the sidelines,” he added to cheers and applause.

Wisely, in retrospect, McCain initially had been more modest. On Sunday, he said on ABC’s “This Week” that congressional negotiators deserve “great credit” for the bipartisan deal. “"It wasn’t because of me,” McCain said. “They did it themselves.”

But at almost the same time, McCain senior adviser Steve Schmidt was saying on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “What Sen. McCain was able to do … was to help get all of the parties to the table. There had been announcements by Senate leaders saying that a deal had been reached earlier in the week. There were no votes for that deal.

“Sen. McCain knew time was short and he came back, he listened and he helped put together the framework of getting everybody to the table, which was necessary to produce a package to avoid a financial catastrophe for this country.”

On Monday morning, McCain campaign communications director Jill Hazelbaker said on Fox News that the deal would not have happened “without Sen. McCain.”

They spend the whole morning claiming credit for the wonderful bill that's going to help the banking industry, credit which they almost certainly don't deserve...and then it completely blows up in their faces.

DukeNukeEm · September 29, 2008

McCain's campaign is giving George McGovern's a run for it's money as the worst run laughingstock in the history of presidential politics.

Balta1701 · September 29, 2008

"Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unnecessary partisanship into the process. Now is not the time to fix the blame, it's time to fix the problem."

I'm reading that these 2 sentences came out of Senator McCain's mouth back to back a moment ago. Yup. Just saw the video. Back to back.

lostfan · September 29, 2008

How does he say these things with a straight face?

HuskyCaucasian · September 29, 2008

What does CBS have... well, "nothing"... but that's not the problem... lack of an answer was the problem:

Today, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz reported on potentially embarrassing clips of Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric that haven't yet been aired. The Politico has more information on one in particular:

Of concern to McCain's campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin's interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing.

The Palin aide, after first noting how "infuriating" it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.

After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.

There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.

HuskyCaucasian · September 29, 2008

Palin: We Could Bomb In Pakistan

“So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?” Rovito asked.
“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.

McCain: That's not what she meant

In the interview, Couric asked McCain if Palin should have given voice to this, and he replied...

"Of course not. But, look, I understand this day and age `gotcha' journalism. Is that a pizza place? In a conversation with someone who you didn't hear ... the question very well, you don't know the context of the conversation. Grab a phrase. Gov. Palin and I agree that you don't announce that you're going to attack another country."

Oh come on. that is so lame.

kapkomet · September 30, 2008

QUOTE (Athomeboy_2000 @ Sep 29, 2008 -> 06:38 PM)

Palin: We Could Bomb In Pakistan

McCain: That's not what she meant

Oh come on. that is so lame.