What's funny is that McCain started off his Joe the Plumber Tour by saying that Obama "will say anything to get elected". What? This from the guy who's called Obama a celebrity (in a derogatory manner), a socialist, dangerous for America, has fostered a culture of hate, and has a new TV ad that seems to suggest that we're all going to die if Obama's elected. And Obama's the one who will say anything to get elected? WTF? If that isn't the pot trying to call the kettle black then I don't know what is.
he never should have picked that dumb woman. country first my ass... here are some more quotes. http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081025/pl_politico/14929 Palin allies report rising campaign tension Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign's already-tense internal dynamics. Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline. "She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions. "I think she'd like to go more rogue," he said. The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated. "These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week. "A number of Gov. Palin's staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign's best interests at heart," the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign. Wallace declined to engage publicly in the finger-pointing that has consumed the campaign in the final weeks. "I am in awe of [Palin's] strength under constant fire by the media," she said in an e-mail. "If someone wants to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most graceful thing to do is to lie there." But other McCain aides, defending Wallace, dismissed the notion that Palin was mishandled. The Alaska governor was, they argue, simply unready — "green," sloppy and incomprehensibly willing to criticize McCain for, for instance, not attacking Sen. Barack Obama for his relationship with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Palin has in fact performed fairly well in the moments thought to be key for a vice presidential nominee: She made a good impression in her surprise rollout in Ohio and her speech to the Republican National Convention went better than the campaign could have imagined. She turned in an adequate performance at a debate against the Democratic Party's foremost debater. But other elements of her image-making went catastrophically awry. Her dodging of the press and her nervous reliance on tight scripts in her first interview, with ABC News, became a national joke — driven home to devastating effect by "Saturday Night Live" comic Tina Fey. The Couric interview — her only unstaged appearance for a week — was "water torture," as one internal ally put it. Some McCain aides say they had little choice with a candidate who simply wasn't ready for the national stage, and that Palin didn't forcefully object. Moments that Palin's allies see as triumphs of instinct and authenticity — the Wright suggestion, her objection to the campaign's pulling out of Michigan — they dismiss as Palin's "slips and miscommunications," that is, her own incompetence and evidence of the need for tight scripting. But Palin partisans say she chafed at the handling. "The campaign as a whole bought completely into what the Washington media said — that she's completely inexperienced," said a close Palin ally outside the campaign who speaks regularly to the candidate. "Her strategy was to be trustworthy and a team player during the convention and thereafter, but she felt completely mismanaged and mishandled and ill advised," the person said. "Recently, she's gone from relying on McCain advisers who were assigned to her to relying on her own instincts." Palin's loyalists say she's grown particularly disenchanted with the veterans of the Bush reelection campaign, including Schmidt and Wallace, and that despite her anti-intellectual rhetoric, her closest ally among her new traveling aides is a policy adviser, former National Security Council official Steve Biegun. She's also said to be close with McCain's chief foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who prepared her for the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate. When a McCain aide, speaking anonymously Friday to The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, suggested that Palin's charge that Obama was "palling around with terrorists" had "escaped HQ's vetting," it was Scheunemann who fired off an angry response that the speech was "fully vetted" and that to attack Palin for it was "bull****." Palin's "instincts," on display in recent days, have had her opening up to the media, including a round of interviews on talk radio, cable and broadcast outlets, as well as chats with her traveling press and local reporters. Reporters really began to notice the change last Sunday, when Palin strolled over to a local television crew in Colorado Springs. "Get Tracey," a staffer called out, according to The New York Times, summoning spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt, who reportedly "tried several times to cut it off with a terse 'Thank you!' in between questions, to no avail." The moment may have caused ulcers in some precincts of the McCain campaign, but it was an account Palin's admirers in Washington cheered. Palin had also sought to give meatier policy speeches, in particular on energy policy and on policy for children with disabilities; she finally gave the latter speech Friday, but had wanted to deliver it much earlier. She's also begun to make her own ad hoc calls about the campaign's direction and the ticket's policy. McCain, for instance, has remained silent on Democrats' calls for a stimulus package of new spending, a move many conservatives oppose but that could be broadly popular. But in an interview with the conservative radio host Glenn Beck earlier this week, Palin went "off the reservation" to make the campaign policy, one aide said. "I say, you know, when is enough enough of taxpayer dollars being thrown into this bill out there?" she asked. "This next one of the Democrats being proposed should be very, very concerning to all Americans because to me it sends a message that $700 billion bailout, maybe that was just the tip of the iceberg. No, you know, we were told when we've got to be believing if we have enough elected officials who are going to be standing strong on fiscal conservative principles and free enterprise and we have to believe that there are enough of those elected officials to say, 'No, OK, that's enough.'" (A McCain spokeswoman said Palin's statement was "a good sentiment.") But few imagine that Palin will be able to repair her image — and bad poll numbers — in the eleven days before the campaign ends. And the final straw for Palin and her allies was the news that the campaign had reported spending $150,000 on her clothes, turning her, again, into the butt of late-night humor. "She never even set foot in these stores," the senior Republican said, noting Palin hadn't realized the cost when the clothes were brought to her in her Minnesota hotel room. "It's completely out-of-control operatives," said the close ally outside the campaign. "She has no responsibility for that. It's incredibly frustrating for us and for her." Between Palin's internal detractors and her allies, there's a middle ground: Some aides say that she's a flawed candidate whose handling exaggerated her weak spots. "She was completely mishandled in the beginning. No one took the time to look at what her personal strengths and weaknesses are and developed a plan that made sense based on who she is as a candidate," the aide said. "Any concerns she or those close to her have about that are totally valid." But the aide said that Palin's inexperience led her to her own mistakes: "How she was handled allowed her weaknesses to hang out in full display." If McCain loses, Palin's allies say that the national Republican Party hasn't seen the last of her. Politicians are sometimes formed by a signal defeat — as Bill Clinton was when he was tossed out of the Arkansas governor's mansion after his first term — and Palin would return to a state that had made her America's most popular governor and where her image as a reformer who swept aside her own party's insiders rings true, if not in the cartoon version the McCain campaign presented. "There are people in this campaign who feel a real sense of loyalty to her and are really pleased with her performance and think she did a great job," said the McCain insider. "She has a real future in this party."
It would fit in with the way the McCain campaign has been run. Take something that obviously isn't working for you and make it the focal point. What? People really don't like or care about Joe the Plumber? Well lets do a Joe the Plumber tour! What? People really don't like Sarah Palin? Well lets make her the face of the new Republican party!
It looks like the Republican party is becoming the divided party now. I attended a rally for Obama today in my hometown that featured Bill Clinton, Blanche Lincoln, Mark & David Pryor, Rodney Slater, Mike Beebe, Dustin McDaniel, Mary Steenburgen and several others. The way these men and women spoke about Obama and the Democratic party in general it seems that it is very cemented now and that the tables have indeed turned.
We all know Palin was a gimmick type of VP choice. I don't blame her for protecting herself. After this election, John McCain will have lost almost all of his support. The people who once supported him before the race for presidency have become disgusted with him. It's all over the place. Palin is just trying to salvage her career. If McCain loses the election, I'd say his career is pretty much over. His so-called crossing of party lines won't be applicable. And please, no more pictures of Bush. He is an American tragedy. Cod
McCain's Camp has already decided on their scapegoat if they lose the election...... http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/15073 John McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday. And it has decided on Sarah Palin. In recent days, a McCain “adviser” told Dana Bash of CNN: “She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone.” Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking? Also, a “top McCain adviser” told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is “a whack job.” Maybe she is. But who chose to put this “whack job” on the ticket? Wasn’t it John McCain? And wasn’t it his first presidential-level decision? And if you are a 72-year-old presidential candidate, wouldn’t you expect that your running mate’s fitness for high office would come under a little extra scrutiny? And, therefore, wouldn’t you make your selection with care? (To say nothing about caring about the future of the nation?) McCain didn’t seem to care that much. McCain admitted recently on national TV that he “didn’t know her well at all” before he chose Palin. But why not? Why didn’t he get to know her better before he made his choice? It’s not like he was rushed. McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination in early March. He didn’t announce his choice for a running mate until late August. Wasn’t that enough time for McCain to get to know Palin? Wasn’t that enough time for his crackerjack “vetters” to investigate Palin’s strengths and weaknesses, check through records and published accounts, talk to a few people, and learn that she was not only a diva but a whack job diva? But McCain picked her anyway. He wanted to close the “enthusiasm gap” between himself and Barack Obama. He wanted to inject a little adrenaline into the Republican National Convention. He wanted to goose up the Republican base. And so he chose Palin. Is she really a diva and a whack job? Could be. There are quite a few in politics. (And a few in journalism, too, though in journalism they are called “columnists.”) As proof that she is, McCain aides now say Palin is “going rogue” and straying from their script. Wow. What a condemnation. McCain sticks to the script. How well is he doing? In truth, Palin’s real problem is not her personality or whether she takes orders well. Her real problem is that neither she nor McCain can make a credible case that Palin is ready to assume the presidency should she need to. And that undercuts McCain’s entire campaign. This was the deal McCain made with the devil. In exchange for energizing his base by picking Palin, he surrendered his chief selling point: that he was better prepared to run the nation in time of crisis, whether it be economic, an attack by terrorists or, as he has been talking about in recent days, fending off a nuclear war. “The next president won’t have time to get used to the office,” McCain told a crowd in Miami on Wednesday. “I’ve been tested, my friends, I’ve been tested.” But has Sarah Palin? I don’t believe running mates win or lose elections, though some believe they can be a drag on the ticket. Lee Atwater, who was George H.W. Bush’s campaign manager in 1988, told me that Dan Quayle cost the ticket 2 to 3 percentage points. But Bush won the election by 7.8 percentage points. So, in Atwater’s opinion, Bush survived his bad choice by winning the election on his own. McCain could do the same thing. But his campaign’s bad decisions have not stopped with Sarah Palin. It has made a series of questionable calls, including making Joe the Plumber the embodiment of the campaign. Are voters really expected to warmly embrace an (unlicensed) plumber who owes back taxes and complains about the possibility of making a quarter million dollars a year? And did McCain’s aides really believe so little in John McCain’s own likability that they thought Joe the Plumber would be more likable? Apparently so. Which is sad. We in the press make too much of running mates and staff and talking points and all the rest of the hubbub that accompanies a campaign. In the end, it comes down to two candidates slugging it out. Either McCain pulls off a victory in the last round or he doesn’t. And if he doesn’t, he has nobody to blame but himself.
McLame won't be able to torpedo Caribou Barbie and get away with it. She will fight him tooth and nail. Can't wait to see those fireworks.
I'll be honest DD, I really liked you until the last 60 days or so. Your posting has become sickening. You've become the left wing example of what's wrong with the right wing.
Oh come on....Justtxyank, How is it sickening? Isn't it better if we can all laugh at stuff rather than take it so seriously? I clearly don't like Palin, but I also don't think that is really her either....just having a bit of a laugh. Maybe you are bothered because my belief that Obama is best option for this country does not match yours. Don't worry though, on Tuesday, it will all be over.....in the meantime, just laugh a little..... DD
I can't stand Palin. This has nothing to do with her or Obama. I begrudge no one for voting for Obama as I completely understand the motivation. My problem with your posting is that you've become increasingly nasty. I know the image above is supposed to be a joke, but you've gone so over the top with everything you post now like saying McCain used bad judgment when in war he got shot down, etc. that I just view everything you post now through that prism. I think the left has had the high ground since about 2002 or 3 when it comes to political rhetoric, but you have lost it in my opinion. Your in the gutter with the rest of them. Maybe not as bad as Basso or TJ, but you're closer to them then I think you'd like.
Just, I see your point, but to me what I post is what I feel. I do think McCain was a crap pilot, I do question his parties claim of him being a hero, why? Becuase they said he was and in my mind it is up to each of us to discover the truth of the matter. And when I look into McCain and his past, I find horrible lapses in judgement, and after the last 8 years of having a guy in the Whitehouse that basically has lied to the American people, gotten us into an unnecessary war, and has gotten our country into 11 trillion dollars in debt, it is time for people to stand up and say....STOP....ENOUGH !! All I want is the truth to be out there, I personally do not care one iota if it offends your sensibilities....if it is the truth, it is the truth, PERIOD.... Clearly, it is all in how you read it....I think McCain used bad judgement as a pilot, others think he was being courageous.....I can see where they think that....but I don't. It doesn't mean that they are wrong and I am right, there is a lot of gray in this matter, but if we are getting into Gray matter, I want a president who actually has some of that stuff.....and McCain is not even in the same league as Obama intellectually. It is time we have a President who inspires people and is an "includer" in world politics instead of an "excluder".... Trust me, when this election is all over, I will go back to caring more about the Rockets, and be just an occassional contributor to the D&D. I hope by then we can all move forward behind the new President WHOMEVER he is.... And I respect everyone on this board, even if I think they are wrong... LOL DD
I've called McCain a snake and said that I cannot in good conscience vote for him no matter who he is running against. I don't know if he is a good pilot or not, but frankly it has nothing to do with whether he is a war hero. He is. He endured terrible things on behalf of this country, no matter what you think of the particular war. All that is fair. I find horrible lapses in his judgment as well. Getting shot down isn't one of them Yeah right. You sound like Sean Hannity when you say that. We don't know what happened in that plane before it was shot down. We don't know what was going on in John McCain's mind. It is irresponsible to try and attack him for what happened that day use it as a defamation of his judgment. There's tons of things to attack him for, tons. This shouldn't be one of them. I agree with this. But again, my issue with your posts have nothing to do with your political ideologies. My vote will not be cast for a single Republican. I think it is a dead party run by idiots. Your political affiliation is irrelevant to me. Good. I don't know anyone on this board well enough to say I really respect them, but I do respect some who I believe have shown true wisdom and integrity on the board. I think you've fallen short lately in your over the top hatred of Palin and your subsequent trashing of her life and her as a human being. It's not different than the attacks on Obama. I just wish you'd be above it. Thank god you signed that post, because by the time I finished responding I'd forgotten who the original author was!
I guess it boils down to your definition of a hero, I don't think that makes McCain a hero but it surely makes him tough. Fair enough, I can see where you are coming from. I will go back to being above it...after this election... Hey, a trademark is a trademark. DD
