McCain's VP Pick?

[Burn this City]

^^That was my lame attempt at being sarcasically clever. But thanks for the clarification.

So wait...this is a legitimate argument over his birth certificate and proof of citizenship? After this is settled, can we move on to the candidates' level of patriotism, religion, and/or who they "associate" with?

I long for the days democracy was based around policy and issues...

[Usually Lurkin]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

I was in a position once where I needed a copy of my birth certificate, not having the original. I was able to get one, and it was certainly certified.

that's how easy it is to do.

What's more...if I hadn't been born in the county, I don't expect that I would have gotten one.

I don't expect that govermental entities are in the business of handing out "non-certified" copies of birth certificates.

I googled "non certified copy of birth certificate." This was the first link:

[PDF] MINNESOTA BIRTH RECORD APPLICATION - NON-CERTIFIED COPY Part B : :
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
Part A: To receive a non-certified copy of the birth record, provide the following information as it occurs on the birth record: ...
http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/c...birthappnc.pdf - Similar pages

[Mavdog]

Originally Posted by kg_veteran

Okay, now your transformation IS complete. Much like Alan Colmes, you completely ignored what I said and just repeated yourself.

BTW, you'll have to pardon me if I don't want to trust FactCheck.Org on this one, either. I don't find them to be "non-partisan" at all, and I found their article on the subject very unconvincing.

The lawsuit will ultimately be dismissed, because Berg doesn't have standing to bring the case. But that doesn't make the question he is raising illegitimate. In fact, this is a question of legitimacy, and it is one that has yet to be answered.

yes, repeating oneself is done when the party who is supposed to be listening seems deaf.

your continued attacks on every source that you disagree with is getting old and redundant. you dismiss factchek.org in a flippant comment with no basis of support.

as for "legitimate", here is what they say:

"We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs"

clearly "certified" in my book.

now, continue with your bashing of the messenger...

[kg_veteran]

Originally Posted by Mavdog

yes, repeating oneself is done when the party who is supposed to be listening seems deaf.

your continued attacks on every source that you disagree with is getting old and redundant. you dismiss factchek.org in a flippant comment with no basis of support.

as for "legitimate", here is what they say:

"We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs"

clearly "certified" in my book.

now, continue with your bashing of the messenger...

I've read back over the FactCheck.org article. What they describe does appear to be a certified, short-form birth certificate. So here are my questions:

1. Why hasn't the birth certificate been produced to (or requested by) the MSM? If FactCheck.org can arrange to inspect it, why not produce it for everybody to see?
2. Rather than fighting Berg's lawsuit on procedural grounds (asserting that he doesn't have standing), why doesn't Obama simply produce the birth certificate to the Court?

[dude1394]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

Barack is representing neither "regular old hockey moms" nor "Joe Six-Pack." Six pack of Dom Perignon, maybe!

I don't thinks so...I think that Barack bought his own clothes because he's worth more than 4million whereas Sarah is not.

[chumdawg]

Didn't she already have clothes?

[mcsluggo]

a man needs to own 5 suits, and he is fine. Even if he is on the campaign trail. add in 3 pairs of shoes 3 belts, 10 ties, 10 shirts, 10 pairs of socks, and 35 pairs of frilly ladies underwear....

and you have basically spent 2 or 3 grand .... and they are good for about the next 5 years (at least... though you will probably have to cycle out the ties)

[mcsluggo]

although, at neiman marcus you can up that 3grand to 20 grand, I suppose....

[92bDad]

Originally Posted by chumdawg

KG, let me get this straight, because I have actually spent a good deal of time today thinking about it. You are claiming, correct, that the birth certificate Obama produced is not sufficient evidence to establish that he meets the Constitutional requirements of the presidential office?

I'm sure that it has ever opportunity to be a legit document provided by the state...sort of like those from the Chinese Womans Gymnastics Team.

It's a government document, why would anyone question that?

[chumdawg]

As Parcells would say, Palin has gone "off the reservation."

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) -- With 10 days until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense, they are spilling out in public, sources say.

Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue."

A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."

A Palin associate defended her, saying that she is "not good at process questions" and that her comments on Michigan and the robocalls were answers to process questions.

But this Palin source acknowledged that Palin is trying to take more control of her message, pointing to last week's impromptu news conference on a Colorado tarmac.

Tracey Schmitt, Palin's press secretary, was urgently called over after Palin wandered over to the press and started talking. Schmitt tried several times to end the unscheduled session.

"We acknowledge that perhaps she should have been out there doing more," a different Palin adviser recently said, arguing that "it's not fair to judge her off one or two sound bites" from the network interviews.

The Politico reported Saturday on Palin's frustration, specifically with McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Palin's initial press contact to high-profile interviews with Charlie Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, which all McCain sources admit were highly damaging.

In response, Wallace e-mailed CNN the same quote she gave the Politico: "If people want to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most honorable thing to do is to lie there."

But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse.

They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.

"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."

Schmitt came to the back of the plane Saturday to deliver a statement to traveling reporters: "Unnamed sources with their own agenda will say what they want, but from Gov. Palin down, we have one agenda, and that's to win on Election Day."

Yet another senior McCain adviser lamented the public recriminations.

"This is what happens with a campaign that's behind; it brings out the worst in people, finger-pointing and scapegoating," this senior adviser said.

This adviser also decried the double standard, noting that Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, has gone off the reservation as well, most recently by telling donors at a fundraiser that America's enemies will try to "test" Obama.

Tensions like those within the McCain-Palin campaign are not unusual; vice presidential candidates also have a history of butting heads with the top of the ticket.

John Edwards and his inner circle repeatedly questioned Sen. John Kerry's strategy in 2004, and Kerry loyalists repeatedly aired in public their view that Edwards would not play the traditional attack dog role with relish because he wanted to protect his future political interests.

Even in a winning campaign like Bill Clinton's, some of Al Gore's aides in 1992 and again in 1996 questioned how Gore was being scheduled for campaign events.

Jack Kemp's aides distrusted the Bob Dole camp and vice versa, and Dan Quayle loyalists had a list of gripes remarkably similar to those now being aired by Gov. Palin's aides.

With the presidential race in its final days and polls suggesting that McCain's chances of pulling out a win are growing slim, Palin may be looking after her own future.

"She's no longer playing for 2008; she's playing 2012," Democratic pollster Peter Hart said. "And the difficulty is, when she went on 'Saturday Night Live,' she became a reinforcement of her caricature. She never allowed herself to be vetted, and at the end of the day, voters turned against her both in terms of qualifications and personally."

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/...ion/index.html

[dude1394]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...-a-brainiac/p/
There might be hope for journalists yet.

The former editor in chief of Ms. magazine (and a Democrat) on what she learned on a campaign plane with the would-be VP.

It's difficult not to froth when one reads, as I did again and again this week, doubts about Sarah Palin's “intelligence,” coming especially from women such as PBS's Bonnie Erbe, who, as near as I recall, has not herself heretofore been burdened with the Susan Sontag of Journalism moniker. As Fred Barnes—God help me, I'm agreeing with Fred Barnes—suggests in the Weekly Standard, these high toned and authoritative dismissals come from people who have never met or spoken with Sarah Palin. Those who know her, love her or hate her, offer no such criticism. They know what I know, and I learned it from spending just a little time traveling on the cramped campaign plane this week: Sarah Palin is very smart.

I'm a Democrat, but I've worked as a consultant with the McCain campaign since shortly after Palin's nomination. Last week, there was the thought that as a former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine as well as a feminist activist in my pre-journalism days, I might be helpful in contributing to a speech that Palin had long wanted to give on women's rights.

What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

Now by “smart,” I don't refer to a person who is wily or calculating or nimble in the way of certain talented athletes who we admire but suspect don't really have serious brains in their skulls. I mean, instead, a mind that is thoughtful, curious, with a discernable pattern of associative thinking and insight. Palin asks questions, and probes linkages and logic that bring to mind a quirky law professor I once had. Palin is more than a “quick study”; I'd heard rumors around the campaign of her photographic memory and, frankly, I watched it in action. She sees. She processes. She questions, and only then, she acts. What is often called her “confidence” is actually a rarity in national politics: I saw a woman who knows exactly who she is.

For all those old enough to remember Senator Sam Ervin, the brilliant strict constitutional constructionist and chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee whose patois included “I'm just a country lawyer”… Yup, Palin is that smart.

So no simple task then, this speech on women's rights. For the sin of being a Christian personally opposed to abortion, Palin is being pilloried by the inside-the-Beltway Democrat feminist establishment. (Yes, she is anti-abortion. And yes, instead of buying organic New Zealand lamb at Whole Foods, she joins other Alaskans in hunting for food. That's it. She is not a right-wing nut, and all the rest of the Internet drivel—the book banning at the Library, the rape kits decision – is nonsense. I digress.) Palin's role in this campaign was to energize “the Republican base,” which she has inarguably done. She also was expected to reach out to Hillary Clinton “moderates.” (Right. Only a woman would get both those jobs in either party.) Look, I am obviously personally pro-choice, and I disagree with McCain and Palin on that and a few other issues. But like many other Democrats, including Lynn Rothschild, I'm tired of the Democratic Party taking women for granted. I also happen to believe Sarah Palin supports women's rights, deeply and passionately.


Many of those—not all—who decried the sexist media treatment of Hillary Clinton have been silent as Palin has been skewered in the old ways that female public figures are skewered, as well as a host of sexualized new ways as well. Some feminists have weighed in; “Even the reportedly clear glasses she wears to play down her beauty queen credential and enhance her gravitas can't make up for experience,” writes my heroine Suzanne Braun Levine, former editor of Ms. Oppose her on policy? Fine. But how sad for feminist leaders to sink this low, especially when Palin has worn glasses since she was 10 years old.

Last month a prominent feminist blogger, echoing that sensibility, declared that the media was wrongly buying into the false idea that Palin was a feminist. Why? Well, just because she said she was a feminist, because she supported women's rights and opportunities, equal pay, Title IV—that was just “empty rhetoric,” they said. At least the blogger didn't go as far as NOW's Kim Gandy and declare that Palin was not a woman. Bottom line: you are not a feminist until we say you are. And there you have the formula for diminishing what was once a great and important mass social change movement to an exclusionary club that rejects women who sincerely want to join and, God forbid, grow to lead.

But here is the good news: women, citizens of America's high and low culture, the Economist and People magazine readers, will get it. They got it with Hillary even when feminist leaders were not supporting her or doing so half-heartedly. Yes, Palin is a harder sell, she looks and sounds different, and one can rightfully oppose her based on abortion policies. If you only vote on how a person personally feels about abortion, you will never want her to darken your door. If you care about anything else, she will continue to intrigue you. As Time's Nancy Gibbs noted a few weeks ago, quoting bioethicist Tom Murray, “Sympathy and subtlety are seasonings rarely applied to political red meat.” Will Palin's time come next week? I don't know. But her time will come.

[mary]

Fox news report on Palin

[Epitome22]

Originally Posted by dude1394

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...-a-brainiac/p/
There might be hope for journalists yet.

yawn

When she knows which countries are in the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the difference between a continent and a country I will begin to consider that she may be a secret rhodes scholar. Until then, I'm inclined to believe the recent Fox news report (and similar reports from the LIEberal media) that she's an air-head redneck beauty queen.

[wmbwinn]

can't we all get along now...

doubt it, at least for a while

[wmbwinn]

Last night was truly a historic occasion: For only the second time in her adult life, Michelle Obama was proud of her country!

The big loser of this election is Colin Powell, whose last-minute endorsement of Obama put the Illinois senator over the top. Powell was probably at home last night, yelling at his TV, "Are you KIDDING me? That endorsement was sarcastic!"

The winner, of course, is Obama, who must be excited because now he can start hanging out in public with Bill Ayers and Rev. Jeremiah Wright again. John McCain is a winner because he can resume buying more houses.

And we're all winners because we will never again have to hear McCain say, "my friends."

After Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election, Hillary Clinton immediately announced that, henceforth, she would be known as "Hillary Rodham Clinton." So maybe Obama can now become B. Hussein Obama, his rightful name.

This was such an enormous Democratic year that even John Murtha won his congressional seat in Pennsylvania after calling his constituents racists. It turns out they're not racists -- they're retards. Question: What exactly would one have to say to alienate Pennsylvanians? That Joe Paterno should retire?

Apparently Florida voters didn't mind Obama's palling around with Palestinian activist Rashid Khalidi and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, either. There must be a whole bunch of retired Pennsylvania Jews down there.

Have you ever noticed that whenever Democrats lose presidential elections, they always blame it on the personal qualities of their candidate? Kerry was a dork, Gore was a stiff, Dukakis was a bloodless android, Mondale was a sad sack.

This blame-the-messenger thesis allows Democrats to conclude that their message was fine -- nothing should be changed! The American people are clamoring for higher taxes, big government, a defeatist foreign policy, gay marriage, the whole magilla. It was just this particular candidate's personality.

Republicans lost this presidential election, and I don't blame the messenger; I blame the message. How could Republicans go after B. Hussein Obama (as he is now known) on planning to bankrupt the coal companies when McCain supports the exact same cap and trade policies and earnestly believes in global warming?

How could we go after Obama for his illegal alien aunt and for supporting driver's licenses for illegal aliens when McCain fanatically pushed amnesty along with his good friend Teddy Kennedy?

How could we go after Obama for Jeremiah Wright when McCain denounced any Republicans who did so?

How could we go after Obama for planning to hike taxes on the "rich," when McCain was the only Republican to vote against both of Bush's tax cuts on the grounds that they were tax cuts for the rich?

And why should Republican activists slave away working for McCain when he has personally, viciously attacked: John O'Neill and the Swift Boat Veterans, National Right to Life director Doug Johnson, evangelical pastors Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and John Hagee, various conservative talk radio hosts, the Tennessee Republican Party and on and on and on?

As liberal Democrat E.J. Dionne Jr. exuded about McCain in The Washington Post during the Republican primaries, "John McCain is feared by Democrats and liked by independents." Dionne proclaimed that McCain "may be the one Republican who can rescue his party from the undertow of the Bush years."

Similarly, after unelectable, ultraconservative Reagan won two landslide victories, James Reston of The New York Times gave the same advice to Vice President George H.W. Bush: Stop being conservative! Bush was "a good man," Reston said in 1988, "and might run a strong campaign if liberated from Mr. Reagan's coattails."

Roll that phrase around a bit -- "liberated from Mr. Reagan's coattails." This is why it takes so long to read the Times -- you have to keep reading the same paragraph over again to see if you missed a word.

Bush, of course, rode Reagan's ultraconservative coattails to victory, then snipped those coattails by raising taxes and was soundly defeated four years later.

I keep trying to get Democrats to take my advice (stop being so crazy), but they never listen to me. Why do Republicans take the advice of their enemies?

How many times do we have to run this experiment before Republican primary voters learn that "moderate," "independent," "maverick" Republicans never win, and right-wing Republicans never lose?

Indeed, the only good thing about McCain is that he gave us a genuine conservative, Sarah Palin. He's like one of those insects that lives just long enough to reproduce so that the species can survive. That's why a lot of us are referring to Sarah as "The One" these days.

Like Sarah Connor in "The Terminator," Sarah Palin is destined to give birth to a new movement. That's why the Democrats are trying to kill her. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is involved somehow, too. Good Lord, I'm tired.

After showing nearly superhuman restraint throughout this campaign, which was lost the night McCain won the California primary, I am now liberated to announce that all I care about is hunting down and punishing every Republican who voted for McCain in the primaries. I have a list and am prepared to produce the names of every person who told me he was voting for McCain to the proper authorities.

We'll start with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Florida Gov. Charlie Crist. Then we shall march through the states of New Hampshire and South Carolina -- states that must never, ever be allowed to hold early Republican primaries again.

For now, we have a new president-elect. In the spirit of reaching across the aisle, we owe it to the Democrats to show their president the exact same kind of respect and loyalty that they have shown our recent Republican president.

Starting tomorrow, if not sooner.

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=29385


Ignore the inflammatory response which is what she wants. There is a lot of real content in there...

[CanadianMavsFan]

If Sarah Palin is leader of a new age for the Republican party, the Democrats have nothing to worry about. The Republicans need to inject youth into their party to attract younger voters, and I'll take Bobby Jindal over Sarah Palin any day of the week. Obviously I disagree with Jindal on alot of the issues, but at least he's got a grasp on them. Sarah Palin is a moron, and if anything she was directly responsible for the election being such a blowout. Palin made a joke out of McCain's campaign, just as if Obama appointed Dennis Kucinich as his VP his campaign would have gone downhill.

A new generation is starting to go the polls, and Republicans have to accept that they are going to be more progressive and more left leaning that the past generations. They have to adjust to that, and I have no doubt they will.

[dude1394]

Nothing like having this as third in succession.

[mcsluggo]

she already was.
Thing is, at least now #1 and #2 in front of her are finally actually better.

[mary]

Originally Posted by mary

Fox news report on Palin

If anyone is interested, the Newsweek piece is pretty interesting. Its not specifically a Palin piece, there's other behind-the-scenes info about the campaigns.

[wmbwinn]

Originally Posted by mary

Fox news report on Palin

Here is an interesting take on this. Can't say either side of this arguement is correct. Just interesting.

++++++++++++++

RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, it is worse than I thought. It is worse than I thought inside the Republican Party. What the Republican Party, led by disgruntled and failed McCain staffers are trying to do to Sarah Palin, is unconscionable and is unacceptable. Greetings, my friends, it's Rush Limbaugh behind the Golden EIB Microphone. Once again, coming to you live and direct from the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Great to have you here. 800-282-2882, the e-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

You remember during the campaign, Bill Cunningham in Cincinnati went out at a rally for McCain, introduced McCain, well, he didn't introduce him but he got the crowd riled up, he did a warmup for the later appearance by McCain and referred to Obama with his full name, Barack Hussein Obama. McCain went into a tizzy and denounced Cunningham and he denounced all kinds of other people who were supporting McCain and trying to rally supporters for McCain. Any time they said anything about Obama that McCain didn't like, something as innocuous as mentioning his middle name, McCain denounced them, distanced himself. You wonder why the Republican Party lost in North Carolina. Remember the great ads the North Carolina Republican Party ran and McCain denounced them, demanded they pull the ads down?

Now, where is Senator McCain today when members of his own staff are trying to destroy Sarah Palin? I haven't heard a word. In fact, all I've heard about Senator McCain is this from the Associated Press-Obama: "During the campaign, McCain staunchly opposed setting a deadline even as the Iraqi government began working with the Bush administration to do so. But in conceding the presidency to Obama, McCain pledged 'to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.' Aides said they believed McCain would work well with Obama as president because much of his best work in the Senate had been done with Democrats, including a landmark campaign finance law he crafted with Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold," and the unsuccessful effort with Ted Kennedy to pass comprehensive immigration reform. "Democrats, who padded their majorities in the House and Senate, have a suggestion: McCain can mediate solutions to partisan standoffs on key legislation." Chuck-U Schumer, New York Democrat: "There's a need for the old John McCain, a leader who worked in a bipartisan way."

So the Democrats, they're out there, they want McCain to come back and be some kind of a liaison from the Obama White House to the Senate. The old John McCain's back, the guy who worked with the Democrats. Where is he denouncing his own staff dumping all over Sarah Palin? Let me tell you why they're dumping all over Sarah Palin. They are dumping all over Sarah Palin because she is conservative. This is why I say it is worse than I thought. I knew during the campaign, I knew during the primaries that we had a bunch of different coalitions now making up the Republican Party and that all those other coalitions were doing everything they could to dismantle and dismember conservatism and to render it inoperative in the Republican Party. We all knew this. One of the purposes of the country club blue-blood Republicans was to find a candidate, go out and reach to the other side, bring in Democrats, bring in independents and so forth, and that would be the magic formula to go out and win. And then support comprehensive immigration reform, because big business wants it for cheap labor and that's going to get the Hispanic vote. We see the results. They were all wrong, the strategies were all wrong, they were a dismal failure.

So now Sarah Palin, who was the one person in this campaign that brought the Republican base back into the fold, that fired them up, that inspired them, that excited them, we all saw the turnout where she went, we all saw her speeches. Their focusing here on one Katie Couric interview, but some of the things that they are saying about her are just unconscionable and unacceptable, and they have been leaking this stuff from inside the McCain campaign. We need to know who these people are for future reference down the line. Now, Carl Cameron did a report on Fox last night, he was on the O'Reilly factor and he's now been everywhere on Fox because people have been leaking to him, but it's not just Fox and Carl Cameron. Newsweek has a Special Project, they call it, on Sarah Palin, the purpose of which is to destroy Sarah Palin and, of course, establish The Anointed One.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: It's worse than I thought. There are country club blue-blood moderate Republicans who want nothing to do with a firebrand conservative in the Republican Party who can fire up people, who can inspire people, who can motivate them.

This Newsweek Special Project is amazing. "Newsweek has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported." Now, why? Why do this? Who benefits from this? Who gains from this kind of story running right now? She's back in Alaska. The campaign's over. The election's over and we got more stories on her wardrobe and how she's a diva? Who in the world makes out okay if this happens? And, see, when you ask the question of who benefits, it's amazing how the seas do part and enlightenment shoves your way and you can see exactly what's going on. Listen to this. "While publicly supporting Palin --" right. Publicly supporting her? We had leaks trying to cream her during the campaign. "-- McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family -- clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards.

"The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent 'tens of thousands' more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as 'Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,' and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books. A Palin aide said: 'Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin.'"

So what's going on here is two things: an effort to blame her for the loss, all this talk about she dragged the ticket down, which is an absolute laugher, it is an absolute joke and an effort to damage her for the future. It's unconscionable what is happening and what they're doing to Sarah Palin in our own party. Let me ask you this, folks. Will smearing a classy and upbeat conservative star make her more or less popular with the Republican base? If she decides to remain a public figure, she will be a very popular national figure, and I don't think she's gonna be intimidated by anybody regarding her decision whatever she wants to do, but that is the precise reason that they're going after her on our side. McCain moderates don't care for conservatives. We know this. McCain moderates are not welcome going forward in our party, as far as I'm concerned, especially now that Obama wants McCain to be a liaison between his administration and the Senate, because the good McCain's back, the old good John McCain, the guy that votes with Democrats, and Chuck-U Schumer, I mean that's the kind of resume we want, right? We want a resume, we want a guy who claims that the real McCain, Chuck Schumer defining for us who the real McCain is, that's the guy we want back, right?

It just makes me mad, folks, put plain and simple, it infuriates me. It's beyond low. Look at what she did. She's minding her own business up there in Alaska; she didn't campaign for the veep job. So they call her up, 'cause they need a Hail Mary, they're admitting when they say they needed a Hail Mary that their own candidate was going nowhere. They need a Hail Mary, so what did she do? She dragged herself and her entire family all over the fruited plain without missing a beat. She was unfailingly cheerful. She was a spot of sunshine in an abysmal election year. And now they're upset at her because of all the rumors about going rogue and so forth. Wait 'til you hear, if you haven't heard this yet we're going to play after the break what Carl Cameron reported he was told on O'Reilly's Fox show last night by McCain staffers.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's the first of a couple sound bites with Carl Cameron. This is last night on the O'Reilly Factor.

CAMERON: Early on, they began to discover that there were these gaps in her knowledge. I just want to rattle off a couple of the things that insiders say she just simply didn't know. There were real problems with basic civics, government structures; municipal state and federal government responsibilities. She didn't know the nations involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement, we're told. She didn't understand, McCain aides told me today, that Africa was a continent and not a country, and actually asked them -- they argue, they say -- if South Africa wasn't just part of the country as opposed to a country in the continent. They go on to say that she didn't understand the idea of American exceptionalism, a classic principle of Wilsonian doctrine that says that the United States is exceptional in the world and has therefore a very special role in leading the globe.

RUSH: I don't believe any of this, and what kills it for me is that she "didn't understand...American exceptionalism." She's the only one in the McCain campaign who did understand American exceptionalism, and had to drag the rest of the campaign kicking and screaming into the concept. We never heard about American exceptionalism from our own party 'til Sarah Palin showed up. This South African... Not knowing the countries in Africa? Not knowing how the federal government works? She's governor of Alaska, for crying out loud! This is just a smear job. She is being smeared worse than anybody in the McCain campaign went after Obama or any of his questionable allies.

CAMERON: There are stories that say she would look at her press clippings in the morning and throw what has been described to me as "tantrums." One of the more infamous stories that's now come out is there was a time when McCain staffers went to collect her at her hotel room and she had just stepped out of the shower and essentially met them wrapped in a bathrobe. They were taken aback by that. They have suggested that she's a bit of a shopoholic and that on more than one occasion she would go out and buy clothes that to many seemed unnecessary because the campaign had already provided her with a very large wardrobe, uh, a wardrobe that famously rang up a bill of $150,000, mostly because they bought extra sizes to make sure everything fit.

RUSH: (laughing) So this is Carl Cameron last night on Fox detailing what had been told to him. Carl Cameron, by the way, is the voice of the McCain insiders, I should point out. So they're dumping on Sarah Palin, and you have to ask yourself: "Why? Who benefits from this happening to Sarah Palin?"


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: You might ask, "Why is Carl Cameron spewing all this stuff?" Okay, so somebody inside the McCain campaign reports it to him, but why does he spew all this stuff out there? I guess to have a scoop. I don't know. But it's quite telling, it is quite instructive here, ladies and gentlemen, as if we conservatives aren't angry enough with Obama and McCain, the fact is we're going to have to defeat 'em both now, all over again. So I'm just going to warn you, there's going to be a McCain-somebody, comprehensive immigration bill, which will result in the migration of more nonpaying Democrat voters. This I cannot believe and I'm going to deal with this as the program unfolds before your very eyes and ears today. The wizards of smart on our side are all out there talking about how Obama's going to govern from the center. (laughing) They have learned nothing! I don't even think that this is wishful thinking, or hopefulness.

I think it's pure ignorance that Obama's going to govern from the center.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Two more sound bites here on Sarah Palin and we'll move on. This is from DNCTV this morning, Peter Alexander on Palin's shopping spree.

ALEXANDER: An angry McCain aide characterized the shopping spree as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus coast to coast." In fact, they may have spent as much as 20 to $40,000 for clothes on Todd, 20 to $35,000 on clothes for the children, as one staffer had joked, there were also some Gucci shoes being worn by those kids.

RUSH: Now, it's beyond the pale because this is our own party leaking to the Drive-By Media to destroy Sarah Palin. This is a clear indication, my friends, of what is happening. They're attacking Sarah Palin and they're the ones that picked her, or McCain did. They're destroying Sarah Palin, and you have to ask why, what possible benefit is it right now? And the only benefit I can see is to make sure she doesn't rise again as a force for conservatism in the Republican Party. There's no other reason to do this. You can chalk it up to, "Well, maybe they just personally don't like her," that's fine and dandy, but this is suicidal. And I'll tell you something else, the people that are doing this, it must really matter, because they are running a huge risk of never getting hired again. Somebody runs for office, presidential candidate on the Republican side, why would you hire any of these people? A, they're the architects of a huge defeat, and B, they're out now trying to destroy their own vice presidential nominee. I have an idea of one of the names but I'm not going to mention because I can't prove it, so I don't know. But it's obviously more than one person and it's obviously somebody, somebody's doing this. Whoever it is has just shown stripes. This is mind-boggling. It's worse than I thought. Here's Palin last night, herself, after she had landed back in Alaska. An unidentified reporter asked her about all these allegations.

PALIN: That's kind of a small, evidently bitter type of person who would anonymously charge something foolish like that that I perhaps didn't know an answer to a question. So until I know who -- who is talking about it, I won't have a comment on false allegations.

RUSH: So, that's Sarah Palin responding to it trying to take the high road and stay above it. She does raise an interesting point. Why did this person just go out and blab everything to Carl Cameron at Fox? Why not just go on camera with Carl Cameron? Why not just put this out there in your own voice and with your own face on camera? Go ahead and do it on CNN, go do it on ABC. Why do this on Fox? Folks, this is quite telling the way this is all shaking out. These operatives who are leaking, these are the people who work for moderate Republicans. They will work for anyone who will pay them. They are leaking to cover their own butts because they are failures. They are the architects of the failure of this campaign. Now, there's something that happened. I didn't talk about it because I was trying to stay upbeat and positive. The last thing I wanted to do was participate here in dispiriting you. But there was a piece at The Politico.com about two weeks before the election and it was telling, especially now looking at it in hindsight. It was amazing. It was a story filled with anonymous leaks, quotes from anonymous people on how horrible the McCain campaign was, how rotten the candidate himself was.

All of these campaign aides were trying to cover their own rear ends. They were going out there and blaming other campaign aides for things that went wrong, the choice of Palin, why McCain looked like Yosemite Sam prancing around when the dynamite failed to go off at half the debates. It was a circular firing squad, and at the time, the way it was interpreted was, okay, the campaign knows they're going to lose, and these staffers want to work on another campaign, so they're out there covering their bases, firing anonymous shots at all the other campaign staffers, blaming them and blaming him and blaming her and all that. And The Politico story put out, okay, this is the first sign this thing is over. McCain people know they're going to lose, so the campaign staff now trying to protect themselves. That's what this Palin thing is, in part. This Palin thing, these leakers are the kind of people who work for moderate Republicans. They'll work for anybody who will pay them, and they're leaking to cover their own butts now because they are failures. That is precisely what is happening here.


BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: By the way, folks, notice one thing here. When these moderate Republicans, when these McCain staffers go after Sarah Palin, they're not going after her ideas, are they? They're not trashing her ideas. No, no, no, no, no. They're not trashing her support for low marginal tax rates, are they? They're not trashing her ideas on immigration. They're not trashing her ideas on energy, which are better than McCain's. They can't go after her views because going after her views would go after the Republican base, and they still want to pretend that they're interested in the Republican base. So they're trashing her personally. They're trashing her as a person, 'cause that's all they have left. Not even Bob Shrum was this low! Bob Shrum is a perennial loser on the Democrat side managing Democrat presidential campaigns, and not even he went after the people that worked with him in this way.

Now, you might also say, "Hey, if they'd have won, it would have been all different." I don't think so. I do not think so. This is personal. I think if they had won, there would still be an effort against Palin right now to get her off the ticket and get somebody else in there as vice president, if they had won. I'll tell you something else we need to do. As long as we're on the subject here, we didn't even pick our nominee. Can we remember this? We did not pick the nominee. The Democrats and the media picked our nominee. What you people in the McCain campaign and everywhere else need a to start doing in the Republican Party, is close our primaries in states that you have 'em open where Democrats and independents can cross over and select our nominee.

The Democrats hated Operation Chaos. Remember that? They said, "This is unconstitutional! Horrible." It was nothing! This was one small attempt to duplicate what they've been doing for years, selecting our nominee. So I'll make a deal: Democrats pick the Democrat nominee; Republicans pick the Republican nominee. We don't need Democrats and the media picking both nominees. And that is what has happened here.

++++++++++++++

anyway, I'm sure that Rush is not fully correct but it is interesting nonetheless

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/dai...106.guest.html

[wmbwinn]

Originally Posted by CanadianMavsFan

If Sarah Palin is leader of a new age for the Republican party, the Democrats have nothing to worry about. The Republicans need to inject youth into their party to attract younger voters, and I'll take Bobby Jindal over Sarah Palin any day of the week. Obviously I disagree with Jindal on alot of the issues, but at least he's got a grasp on them. Sarah Palin is a moron, and if anything she was directly responsible for the election being such a blowout. Palin made a joke out of McCain's campaign, just as if Obama appointed Dennis Kucinich as his VP his campaign would have gone downhill.

A new generation is starting to go the polls, and Republicans have to accept that they are going to be more progressive and more left leaning that the past generations. They have to adjust to that, and I have no doubt they will.

Bobby Jindal is incredible. He is definitely a rising star in the Republican Party. But, he is not a "more progressive and more left leaning" person. As a matter of fact, a Bobby Jindal/Sarah Palin ticket would be great. Condi Rice might surprise next time as well.

But, I also expect Newt Gingrich to be back in the race. And, if he runs, he will win the primary and be the candidate. And, he is definitely not a "more progressive and more left leaning" candidate.

[dude1394]

If Nancy Pelosi can be speaker of the house and Harry Reid head of the senate...anything is possible.

[jefelump]

Originally Posted by dude1394

If Nancy Pelosi can be speaker of the house and Harry Reid head of the senate...anything is possible.

And if Murtha can call his own constituents racist rednecks and get re-elected, anything is possible...