I feel for Ms. Palin’s son who has been shipped off to the war in Iraq. But at his deployment ceremony, which was on the same day as the Charlie Gibson interview, Sept. 11, she told the audience of soldiers that they would be fighting “the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans.”
Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
Compare it to the first Gibson-Obama encounter please.
you asked for it.
November 1, 2007
CHARLES GIBSON: Next, the presidential race and our attempt to explore the private side of the candidates, to learn about the events and the influences that have shaped them and brought them to this point in their political careers. So today in our Who Is? series, a Democrat relatively new to national politics, Senator Barack Obama.
SENATOR BARACK OBAMA: Every man is either trying to live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes. And, you know, in some ways, I'm probably doing both.
GIBSON: Your mom comes from the Pacific Northwest, migrates to Hawaii, goes to college there, right away, meets a dashing young Kenyan, gets pregnant and the result-
OBAMA: That's me.
GIBSON: That's you. (Voiceover) His father got a fellowship to study on the mainland and never came back.
OBAMA: He became sort of a mythic figure. One, one of the great gifts that my mother gave to me was a positive impression of my father despite the fact that he didn't always behave very well towards her or to his family. And so he was gone by the time I was two.
GIBSON: Obama's mother would remarry and take her son to Indonesia for five years. Only once again did he ever see his father, that, when Obama was 10. (to Obama) He didn't care enough to stay.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: How did you internalize that?
OBAMA: My conclusion is that some of my drive comes from wanting to prove that he should have stuck around, that, that I was worthy of his attentions. There's no doubt that his absence had an impact on me. I engaged in a bunch of self-destructive behavior. I drank. I, you know, tried drugs. I didn't take my schoolwork seriously.
GIBSON: It all changed for Obama in his final college years. (to Obama) What flipped?
OBAMA: I like to think that, that at some point, the, the better angels of my nature took control and that I had some sense deep inside me that, you know, I could, I could make a contribution.
GIBSON: For five years out of college, he worked to pay off student loans and was a community organizer in Chicago, which led him back to school, Harvard Law School, and on a summer job, met this young woman. (to Obama) Did you know right away?
OBAMA: I knew I liked her right away. Michelle has this wonderful sense of humor. And I knew that right away, she would get the joke. She knew how I looked at the world and appreciated it.
GIBSON: They have two daughters, Malia and Sasha. At first, Obama was intimidated by the Harvard law students.
OBAMA: You got a sense, these folks are running on nuclear energy and I'm running on, on steam.
GIBSON: But he found he could more than hold his own, finishing first in his class and being editor of the 'Harvard Law Review." He's candid: it was at Harvard he first thought of running for President.
OBAMA: I thought these will be the people who will be leading at some point. And, you know, I feel comfortable within this group, being able to lead.
GIBSON: So did you think to yourself, 'Barack, what kind of hubris is this that I am thinking about being President?"
OBAMA: Yes. I think if you don't have enough self-awareness to see the element of megalomania involved in thinking you can be president, then you probably shouldn't be president. I think there's a slight madness to thinking that you should be the leader of the free world.
GIBSON: You have written, "I learned to slip back and forth between my black and my white worlds." The simple question I guess is in which world do you really belong?
OBAMA: I think it's both. What's interesting is, is how deeply American I feel, considering this exotic background, that, somehow, all this, this amalgam is part of who I am. And that's part of the reason I love this country so much.
GIBSON: And you can see extended versions of our "Who Is?" series, which will ultimately include all the presidential candidates, at ABCNEWS.com.
IOW Did your mom get pregnant with you?
Wheres your dad?
How did you deal with your dad not coming back?
Why did you go to college?
Did you fall in love with Michelle immediately?
What prompted you to seek the Presidency?
Do you sometimes feel black or white?
Blah, Blah, Blah.
anybody who doesn't think the majority of the MSM is in the tank for the Democrats should leave the country.
LazFX
Good article
quote:
Once Elected, Palin Hired Friends and Lashed Foes
By JO BECKER, PETER S. GOODMAN AND MICHAEL POWELL
WASILLA, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lives by the maxim that all politics is local, not to mention personal.
So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.
Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
When Ms. Palin had to cut her first state budget, she avoided the legion of frustrated legislators and mayors. Instead, she huddled with her budget director and her husband, Todd, an oil field worker who is not a state employee, and vetoed millions of dollars of legislative projects.
And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governors career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.
You should be ashamed! Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!
Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of good old boy politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics she sometimes calls local opponents haters contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
Still, Ms. Palin has many supporters. As a two-term mayor she paved roads and built an ice rink, and as governor she has pushed through higher taxes on the oil companies that dominate one-third of the states economy. She stirs deep emotions. In Wasilla, many residents display unflagging affection, cheering our Sarah and hissing at her critics.
She is bright and has unfailing political instincts, said Steve Haycox, a history professor at the University of Alaska. She taps very directly into anxieties about the economic future.
But, he added, her governing style raises a lot of hard questions.
Ms. Palin declined to grant an interview for this article. The McCain-Palin campaign responded to some questions on her behalf and that of her husband, while referring others to the governors spokespeople, who did not respond.
Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell said Ms. Palin had conducted an accessible and effective administration in the publics interest. Everything she does is for the ordinary working people of Alaska, he said.
In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorneys firing.
Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy. The governor and her top officials sometimes use personal e-mail accounts for state business; dozens of e-mail messages obtained by The New York Times show that her staff members studied whether that could allow them to circumvent subpoenas seeking public records.
Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.
When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages through a federal records request he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.
Their secrecy is off the charts, Mr. Steiner said.
State legislators are investigating accusations that Ms. Palin and her husband pressured officials to fire a state trooper who had gone through a messy divorce with her sister, charges that she denies. But interviews make clear that the Palins draw few distinctions between the personal and the political.
Last summer State Representative John Harris, the Republican speaker of the House, picked up his phone and heard Mr. Palins voice. The governors husband sounded edgy. He said he was unhappy that Mr. Harris had hired John Bitney as his chief of staff, the speaker recalled. Mr. Bitney was a high school classmate of the Palins and had worked for Ms. Palin. But she fired Mr. Bitney after learning that he had fallen in love with another longtime friend.
I understood from the call that Todd wasnt happy with me hiring John and hed like to see him not there, Mr. Harris said.
The Palin family gets upset at personal issues, he added. And at our level, they want to strike back.
Through a campaign spokesman, Mr. Palin said he did not recall referring to Mr. Bitney in the conversation.
Hometown Mayor
Laura Chase, the campaign manager during Ms. Palins first run for mayor in 1996, recalled the night the two women chatted about her ambitions.
I said, You know, Sarah, within 10 years you could be governor, Ms. Chase recalled. She replied, I want to be president.
Ms. Palin grew up in Wasilla, an old fur traders outpost and now a fast-growing exurb of Anchorage. The town sits in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, edged by jagged mountains and birch forests. In the 1930s, the Roosevelt administration took farmers from the Dust Bowl area and resettled them here; their Democratic allegiances defined the valley for half a century.
In the past three decades, socially conservative Oklahomans and Texans have flocked north to the oil fields of Alaska. They filled evangelical churches around Wasilla and revived the Republican Party. Many of these working-class residents formed the electoral backbone for Ms. Palin, who ran for mayor on a platform of gun rights, opposition to abortion and the ouster of the complacent old guard.
After winning the mayoral election in 1996, Ms. Palin presided over a city rapidly outgrowing itself. Septic tanks had begun to pollute lakes, and residential lots were carved willy-nilly out of the woods. She passed road and sewer bonds, cut property taxes but raised the sales tax.
And, her supporters say, she cleaned out the municipal closet, firing veteran officials to make way for her own team. She had an agenda for change and for doing things differently, said Judy Patrick, a City Council member at the time.
But careers were turned upside down. The mayor quickly fired the towns museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. He told us they only wanted two, recalled Esther West, one of the three, and we had to pick who was going to be laid off. The three quit as one.
Ms. Palin cited budget difficulties for the museum cuts. Mr. Cooper thought differently, saying the museum had become a microcosm of class and cultural conflicts in town. It represented that the town was becoming more progressive, and they didnt want that, he said.
Days later, Mr. Cooper recalled, a vocal conservative, Steve Stoll, sidled up to him. Mr. Stoll had supported Ms. Palin and had a long-running feud with Mr. Cooper. He said: Gotcha, Cooper, Mr. Cooper said.
Mr. Stoll did not recall that conversation, although he said he supported Ms. Palins campaign and was pleased when she fired Mr. Cooper.
In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.
Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money.
She told me shed like to see him fired, Mr. Showers recalled. But she couldnt do it herself because the City Council hires the city attorney. Ms. Palin told him to write the council members to complain.
Meanwhile, Ms. Palin pushed the issue from the inside. She started the ball rolling, said Ms. Patrick, who also favored the firing. Mr. Deuser was soon replaced by Ken Jacobus, then the State Republican Partys general counsel.
Professionals were either forced out or fired, Mr. Deuser said.
Ms. Palin ordered city employees not to talk to the press. And she used city money to buy a white Suburban for the mayors use employees sarcastically called it the mayor-mobile.
The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.
People would bring books back censored, recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palins predecessor. Pages would get marked up or torn out.
Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.
But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book Daddys Roommate on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.
Sarah said she didnt need to read that stuff, Ms. Chase said. It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didnt even read it.
Im still proud of Sarah, she added, but she scares the bejeebers out of me.
Reform Crucible
Restless ambition defined Ms. Palin in the early years of this decade. She raised money for Senator Ted Stevens, a Republican from the state; finished second in the 2002 Republican primary for lieutenant governor; and sought to fill the seat of Senator Frank H. Murkowski when he ran for governor.
Mr. Murkowski appointed his daughter to the seat, but as a consolation prize, he gave Ms. Palin the $125,000-a-year chairmanship of a state commission overseeing oil and gas drilling.
Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.
The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemens club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.
She was honest and forthright, said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.
Ms. Palin entered the 2006 primary for governor as a formidable candidate.
In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayors office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighters guile.
I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did, Mr. Jenkins recalled. And she said, Yeah, what I did was wrong.
Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.
Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was smearing her. Now I look at her and think: Man, youre slick, he said.
Ms. Palin won the primary, and in the general election she faced Tony Knowles, the former two-term Democratic governor, and Andrew Halcro, an independent.
Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.
Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showmans instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.
She was fresh, and she was tomorrow, said Michael Carey, a former editorial page editor for The Anchorage Daily News. She just floated along like Mary Poppins.
Government
Half a century after Alaska became a state, Ms. Palin was inaugurated as governor in Fairbanks and took up the reformers sword.
As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.
Mr. Parnell, the lieutenant governor, praised Ms. Palins appointments. The people she hires are competent, qualified, top-notch people, he said.
Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: Who? Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.
I called him and asked, Do you know how to supervise people? said a family friend, Kathy Wells. He said, No, but I think Ill get some help.
The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.
To her supporters and with an 80 percent approval rating, she has plenty Ms. Palin has lifted Alaska out of a mire of corruption. She gained the passage of a bill that tightens the rules covering lobbyists. And she rewrote the tax code to capture a greater share of oil and gas sale proceeds.
Does anybody doubt that shes a tough negotiator? said State Representative Carl Gatto, Republican of Palmer.
Yet recent controversy has marred Ms. Palins reform credentials. In addition to the trooper investigation, lawmakers in April accused her of improperly culling thousands of e-mail addresses from a state database for a mass mailing to rally support for a policy initiative.
While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a personal device like a BlackBerry would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.
Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account when there was significant state business.
On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palins state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: Frank, this is not the governors personal account.
Mr. Bailey responded: Whoops~!
Mr. Bailey, a former midlevel manager at Alaska Airlines who worked on Ms. Palins campaign, has been placed on paid leave; he has emerged as a central figure in the trooper investigation.
Another confidante of Ms. Palins is Ms. Frye, 27. She worked as a receptionist for State Senator Lyda Green before she joined Ms. Palins campaign for governor. Now Ms. Frye earns $68,664 as a special assistant to the governor. Her frequent interactions with Ms. Palins children have prompted some lawmakers to refer to her as the babysitter, a title that Ms. Frye disavows.
Like Mr. Bailey, she is an effusive cheerleader for her boss.
YOU ARE SO AWESOME! Ms. Frye typed in an e-mail message to Ms. Palin in March.
Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governors mansion in Juneau, records show.
During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing Wheres Sarah? pins.
Many politicians say they typically learn of her initiatives and vetoes from news releases.
Mayors across the state, from the larger cities to tiny municipalities along the southeastern fiords, are even more frustrated. Often, their letters go unanswered and their pleas ignored, records and interviews show.
Last summer, Mayor Mark Begich of Anchorage, a Democrat, pressed Ms. Palin to meet with him because the state had failed to deliver money needed to operate city traffic lights. At one point, records show, state officials told him to just turn off a dozen of them. Ms. Palin agreed to meet with Mr. Begich when he threatened to go public with his anger, according to city officials.
At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governors remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.
The administrations e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.
Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a hater.
It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as bad people who are anti-Alaska.
As Ms. Palins star ascends, the McCain campaign, as often happens in national races, is controlling the words of those who know her well. Her mother-in-law, Faye Palin, has been asked not to speak to reporters, and aides sit in on interviews with old friends.
At a recent lunch gathering, an official with the Wasilla Chamber of Commerce asked its members to refer all calls from reporters to the governors office. Dianne Woodruff, a city councilwoman, shook her head.
I was thinking, I dont remember giving up my First Amendment rights, Ms. Woodruff said. Just because youre not going gaga over Sarah doesnt mean you cant speak your mind.
This is why I hate these catch-all threads. Posted a few pages ago.
The17sss
quote:
Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
Sorry, I've posted it three times in this thread already. I'm not wasting my time with you any longer.
Found it... page 40. Posted it 3 times? :rolleyes:
Here is your quote with my answers in colored type: "Why does Sarah Palin deserve my vote for Vice President of the United States? I don't think she does because voting for her would clash with your views How do I know I can trust her to protect and preserve the Constitution of the United States? I think the judges are more likely to be in the position to protect and preserve the constitution than the VP. Plus, it's the conservatives that believe in interpreting the constitution as it's written, not continually changing it based on social justice If she says she is a reformer, what has she reformed? She reformed corruption in her own party in Alaska for one. Read this article from USA Today (strangely enough) detailing how she governed from the CENTER in an inclusive, bipartisan manner while limiting her interventions on social issues. She has focused on government reform, not religious revival. http://www.usatoday.com/news/politi...lin-cover_N.htm Has she ever gone on the record with an opinion about American foreign policy that doesn't relate to building more pipelines in Alaska? From the Gibson interview:
GIBSON: Lets start, because we are near Russia, lets start with Russia and Georgia.
The administration has said weve got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?
PALIN: First off, were going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCains running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And weve got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep
GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.
PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there. I think it was unfortunate. That manifestation that we saw with that invasion of Georgia shows us some steps backwards that Russia has recently taken away from the race toward a more democratic nation with democratic ideals. Thats why we have to keep an eye on Russia.
And, Charlie, youre in Alaska. We have that very narrow maritime border between the United States, and the 49th state, Alaska, and Russia. They are our next door neighbors.We need to have a good relationship with them. Theyre very, very important to us and they are our next door neighbor.
GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?
PALIN: Theyre our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.
GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what theyre doing in Georgia?
PALIN: Well, Im giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that its in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.
Sarah Palin on Russia:
We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. Weve learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.
We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that its in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.
GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO?
PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.
GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.
PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.
Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but
GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldnt we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?
PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, youre going to be expected to be called upon and help.
But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.
We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.
GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.
PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.
And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.
It doesnt have to lead to war and it doesnt have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.
His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, thats a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.
Sarah Palin on Iran and Israel:
GIBSON: Let me turn to Iran. Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel?
PALIN: I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes.
GIBSON: So what should we do about a nuclear Iran? John McCain said the only thing worse than a war with Iran would be a nuclear Iran. John Abizaid said we may have to live with a nuclear Iran. Whos right?
PALIN: No, no. I agree with John McCain that nuclear weapons in the hands of those who would seek to destroy our allies, in this case, were talking about Israel, were talking about Ahmadinejads comment about Israel being the stinking corpse, should be wiped off the face of the earth, thats atrocious. Thats unacceptable.
GIBSON: So what do you do about a nuclear Iran?
PALIN: We have got to make sure that these weapons of mass destruction, that nuclear weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran and we have got to count on our allies to help us, diplomatic pressure.
GIBSON: But, Governor, weve threatened greater sanctions against Iran for a long time. It hasnt done any good. It hasnt stemmed their nuclear program.
PALIN: We need to pursue those and we need to implement those. We cannot back off. We cannot just concede that, oh, gee, maybe theyre going to have nuclear weapons, what can we do about it. No way, not Americans. We do not have to stand for that.
Does it not make you nervous that a major candidate for executive office has been hiding from the press until favorable interview terms could be agreed to? She isn't hiding dude, she's only been around for 2 weeks. She's starting the circuit now. What does it say about her as a candidate that the only time she speaks about her record as governor and mayor is to lie about the bridge to nowhere, selling her plane on ebay (which she didn't), and being a fiscal conservative (which she assuredly was not)? LOL... whatever dude. Obama requested $740 million in earmarks, including for the hospital his wife worked at, and you're going to bust up Palin? Obama is trying to re-invent himself too late here Furthermore, what does it say about McCain that he would choose someone to be Vice President - a heartbeat away from the Oval Office - without even giving her the semblance of a thorough vetting job? Is this indicative of the decision-making strategy he would use as President? Does he not have a responsibility to the American people, when making decisions of extreme national importance, to do his homework beforehand? I don't know, why would the Democrats make a state legislator the actual president? McCain's pick was about strategy, and it appears to be paying off. And speaking of homework, was Obama vetted enough? Obviously not... his associations with Ayers, Wright, ACORN, Rezko, etc. are far more suspicious than Palin, which is why the Obama camp has sent 30 lawyers and researchers to Alaska to dig for dirt on her, out of total desperation. I think it's more irresponsible to have a president like Obama with no executive experience, and who hasn't done anything of notworthy significance in his life except give lofty speeches filled with platitudes the keys to the White House, than it is to have a VP in there with a relatively short record but who made actual decisions as an exec. Is it acceptable for a President to shoot from the hip and make decisions from the gut with no evidence to support said decision? Do we want someone who cares not one iota about the national defense of this country should something happen to him to have his hand on the nuclear football? Please... you make it sound like she's a madman with her finger on the button (if McCain died and she was at the healm). This comment from you is the biggest joke of all. Both McCain and Palin care a lot more about the national defense than Obama, being that he wants to cut our defense, our nuclear arsenal completely, take down missle shields, etc. He cares more about miranda rights for the people who want to kill our soldiers, and legitimizing rogue dictators without preconditions than he does about keeping us safe. In his acceptance speech at Invesco Field, Obama insisted that Democratic presidents could keep America safe, but couldnt come up with an example more recent than 45 years ago when he invoked JFK. Democrats spent the two years attempting to lose the war in Iraq, and most still havent acknowledged their error in doing so. Harry Reid declared the war lost from the chambers floor. Obama only admitted a few days ago what the rest of the nation figured out last September that the surge worked and we have all but won the Iraq war. He has demanded more troops in Afghanistan, as John McCain also has, without explaining why a surge would work in Afghanistan but didnt in Iraq. His running mate couldnt tell the difference between a brigade and a battalion three separate times in the two weeks since joining the ticket. Meanwhile his Code Pink bundler Jodie Davis crashed the Republican convention and had to be forcefully removed on national television. When the Russia/Georgia thing went down he suggested that the UN handle it, not realizing that Russia has veto power. When a candidate has to reach back five decades to find a President that understood national security, it speaks volumes about the direction of their party ever since.
Lebezniatnikov
quote:
Originally posted by Q5echo
ok that i misunderstood you in your last post. i've since deleted that paragragh in my post with the Anne-Marie Slaughter interview. everything else stands. lets recap.
you don't acknowledge fostering democracy in the ME i.e. Iraq, Afghanistan, West Bank/Gaza, Lebanon, Iran as a primary facet of the Bush doctrine. you think it was the norm prior to Bush.
you don't acknowledge unilaterality as a facet of the Bush Doctrine. you don't think it's a radical departure.
and Operation Iraqi Freedom was not a "pre-emptive" engagement of hostilities.
to me thats just absurd. and if it was you sitting in that chair in front of Charlie Gibson Thursday night we'd all be talking about you and how ignorant you are
"Iraqi Freedom" does not equal Operation Enduring Freedom. For God's sake, get your argument straight before you start posting things. For now, I'm going to keep standing on the side of the foreign policy establishment on this one, inconsequential a point on your part as it is.
Even if we took your premise of there being four different official Bush Doctrines as accepted by the foreign policy establishment, Palin batted 0/4 on knowing what the term referred to. So where are you headed with your argument exactly?
LazFX
WHEELS COME OFF STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS?
quote:
From NBC's Mark Murray
For a candidate who prides himself in "straight talk" -- and whose political image in part is based on that truth-telling reputation -- Saturday proved to be a brutal day for John McCain and his campaign.
First came a front-page New York Times piece noting that McCain "has drawn an avalanche of criticism this week from Democrats, independent groups and even some Republicans for regularly stretching the truth." There was also an accompanying fact-check of McCain's latest TV ad, which called it the "latest in a number that resort to a dubious disregard for the facts."
The Washington Post gave "four Pinnochios" to McCain's recent assertion on "The View" that Palin never took earmarks as Alaska governor. Then the Boston Globe reported that Palin didn't really travel inside Iraq as has been claimed. And Bloomberg News said that the McCain camp may not have been exactly truthful in estimating the size of its recent crowds. "Now officials say they can't substantiate the figures McCain's aides are claiming."
To top it off, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to the Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign's factual claims: "Were running a campaign to win. And were not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.
Not surprisingly, the Obama camp has pounced on all this, issuing a memo to reporters entitled "Unraveling the myth of the Straight Talk Express." The memo argues, "Since naming Governor Palin as their vice presidential nominee, the McCain campaign has distorted, distracted, and outright lied to the American people about her record in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that a McCain/Palin Administration would be nothing more than a continuation of the failed Bush policies of the last eight years."
And it concludes, "While the media is slowly starting to call the McCain campaign on their dishonest tactics, McCains staff boasts that they dont care. As a McCain spokesman told the Politico, 'Were running a campaign to win. And were not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.'"
See below for the entire memo...
To: Press Corps
From: Obama Campaign
Re: Unraveling the myth of the Straight Talk Express
Since naming Governor Palin as their Vice Presidential nominee, the McCain campaign has distorted, distracted, and outright lied to the American people about her record in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that a McCain/Palin Administration would be nothing more than a continuation of the failed Bush policies of the last eight years.
Indeed, today alone we learned that the McCain campaigns claim that Governor Palin traveled to Iraq is a lie. In fact, she didnt cross the Kuwait border. We learned that the McCain campaign is desperate enough to tell the press phony crowd numbers, which they falsely attributed to local elected officials and the United States Secret Service. And we learned that despite Senator McCains claim that Governor Palin is a fiscal conservative, spending actually increased during her brief tenure as Governor.
Here are the facts. Governor Palin supported the Bridge to Nowhere, requested hundreds of millions of dollars in earmarks, never visited Iraq, increased spending as governor, increased taxes as governor, and was about as successful selling that luxury jet on eBay as the McCain campaign has been selling her reputation as a reformer. Oh yeah, and the gas pipeline she touts wont be usable for at least a decade, if its completed at all.
While the media is slowly starting to call the McCain campaign on their dishonest tactics, McCains staff boasts that they dont care. As a McCain spokesman told the Politico, Were running a campaign to win. And were not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it.
500,000 people hate the thought of VP Palin so much they gave Obama 66 million dollars to make her go away ;)
ABC News' George Stephanopoulos reports: Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama raised more than $66 million in August, marking a record fundraising month for his campaign.
The campaign also added 500,000 new donors during the month.
Previously, the campaign's best fundraising month was February of this year, in the midst of the heated primary with Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., when they tallied $55 million in donations.
The McCain campaign reported earlier this month that it raised $47 million during August.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/09/stephanopoulo-1.html
Dj Smitty20
quote:
Originally posted by The17sss
It's true man, not because of ignorance or hatred... people here just don't really care what happens in Canada and what Canadians think. Do you care what people from Iceland think? Same thing. Anyway, I know Russia isn't 100% at fault... I never said that. But they do have some culpability.
And what exactly do you mean by the VA Beach comment about you being there if I want to come by and say hi? LOL... are you just saying you'll be there, or are you making an indirect statement to challenge you in person to your face? I don't get it
Americans don't care what Canadians think because they don't care what ANYONE thinks and it is a stupid way of looking at things. Since Canada is your biggest trading partner, maybe you should care what we think. Where do you think you get a lot of your natural gas, oil, timber, FRESH WATER and other natural resources from? Without Canadian trade, the USA would be screwed and vice versa. We have a mutally dependent economic relationship and it's too bad that a lot of Americans are so inward looking to ignore that reality. I can't count how many times I've been asked how "French" I am when I've been down in the US. The level of ignorance is absolutely shocking and we are your closest neighbours!
I was only joking about VA Beach. I'm there for a wedding next week for a guy I went to graduate school with. Interestingly, he came to Canada to get his Masters. But my point is that just because I have a lot of criticisms about the current American administration does not mean I HATE your country. I love a lot of things about Americans and American culture, but that doesn't get you a free pass around the world. People have legitimate beefs and I think it's in your best interest to start listening!
Q5echo
quote:
Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
"Iraqi Freedom" does not equal Operation Enduring Freedom. For God's sake, get your argument straight before you start posting things.
Operation Iraqi Freedom was my rebuttal to your ridiculous claim that it wasn't a "pre-emptive" engagement of hostilities.
quote:
For now, I'm going to keep standing on the side of the foreign policy establishment on this one, inconsequential a point on your part as it is.
sorry but this foreign policy establishment youre refering to regards Operation Enduring Freedom as the first manifestation of the Bush Doctrine. this is not news.
quote:
Even if we took your premise of there being four different official Bush Doctrines as accepted by the foreign policy establishment, Palin batted 0/4 on knowing what the term referred to. So where are you headed with your argument exactly?
a lot of smart people on both sides recognize 4, 6 even 7 versions of the Bush Doctrine. how many does your "foreign policy establishment" recognize?
as far as i can tell you can only admit to knowing one. thats fine. how many has become completely subjective at this point but denying the things you've denied up to this point can't be taken any less seriously than Palin's version. so congrats on your epic fail.
Lebezniatnikov
quote:
Originally posted by Q5echo
epic fail.
Epic fail? You're the one parading around Operation Iraqi Freedom as a pre-emptive measure rather than a preventative one. You still don't understand the difference between those two words, do you?
Sunsnail
Somewhat interesting interview with palin
Q5echo
quote:
Originally posted by Lebezniatnikov
Epic fail? You're the one parading around Operation Iraqi Freedom as a pre-emptive measure rather than a preventative one. You still don't understand the difference between those two words, do you?
please explain to us all how Operation Iraqi Freedom was not "pre-emptive" in nature.
