This is nice. Pretty funny actually. Those links go a poll that some nutjub McCain whiner hired “Zogby” to do. As a polling company, this is what they do. It should be noted, however, that the questions here are supplied by the client, it’s the methodology and actual polling done by the contractee.
The guy hired Zogby to do the poll so he wouldn’t be outed as a sneaky editor for making his documentary regarding the stupidity of the majority of American voters. Sadly, looking at the poll results and then the video (which I’ll post at the end) reveals *EXACTLY* how sneaky and underhanded it is.
The poll results are interesting. What is more interesting is how the guy who commissioned the poll is spinning it, while at the same time whining about the election to everyone that will listen.
Newsweek has a rather fascinating story about some of the inside stories in the 2008 election. Here’s some excerpts of the full article and my take on ’em. BTW, I’m ignoring the Palin stuff on this post, I have concentrated that information here.
The computer systems of both the Obama and McCain campaigns were victims of a sophisticated cyberattack by an unknown “foreign entity,” prompting a federal investigation, NEWSWEEK reports today.
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But by the next day, both the FBI and the Secret Service came to the campaign with an ominous warning: “You have a problem way bigger than what you understand,” an agent told Obama’s team. “You have been compromised, and a serious amount of files have been loaded off your system.” The following day, Obama campaign chief David Plouffe heard from White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, to the same effect: “You have a real problem … and you have to deal with it.” The Feds told Obama’s aides in late August that the McCain campaign’s computer system had been similarly compromised. A top McCain official confirmed to NEWSWEEK that the campaign’s computer system had been hacked and that the FBI had become involved.
When a federal tech spook tells you this, listen to him. Listen to him closely and do what he says. I have a bit of experience in this line of work and most people, particularly community organizers and those that tend to trust others, have no idea, no idea at all, how hard people will work to gain access to certain information. Super-paranoid doesn’t being to define it when you are defending against..who knows what.
The article mentions that the Obama campaign mentioned maybe “Russian or Chinese” hackers. It doesn’t matter where the hackers were from. What matters is who paid them. Considering that complete access to the campaign computers could probably be had for less than seven figures, and don’t kid yourself, when it reaches this point, THE INTRUDERS HAVE COMPLETE ACCESS, there are lots of possible suspects.
And just so you know the paranoid level it takes to keep some of this stuff secure…it’s possible to gain root access by recording the sound of the keystrokes a person uses to log in (record the sounds, test the keyboard, run it through an analysis, repeat the pattern for the password. Each keystroke has a distinct sound, if you listen close enough). A good microphone is all you need, nowadays, at least. And that’s being slightly tricky. There’s a lot easier ways, when given the motivation.
So that’s kinda funny. Palin got hacked with simple social engineering, Obama and McCain probably got hit by professionals.
The Obama campaign was provided with reports from the Secret Service showing a sharp and disturbing increase in threats to Obama in September and early October, at the same time that many crowds at Palin rallies became more frenzied. Michelle Obama was shaken by the vituperative crowds and the hot rhetoric from the GOP candidates. “Why would they try to make people hate us?” Michelle asked a top campaign aide.
Yea…that was to be expected. As I’ve joked quite a bit over the last few days, the Secret Service is hiring. A lot.
On the Sunday night before the last debate, McCain’s core group of advisers—Steve Schmidt, Rick Davis, adman Fred Davis, strategist Greg Strimple, pollster Bill McInturff and strategy director Sarah Simmons—met to decide whether to tell McCain that the race was effectively over, that he no longer had a chance to win. The consensus in the room was no, not yet, not while he still had “a pulse.”
This was a few weeks ago. This was after the economy had gone to shit and everyone had decided on Palin. Without an event on the scale of an alien invasion, Obama was heading to win, and they all knew it. I’m pretty sure Obama did too.
The Obama campaign’s New Media experts created a computer program that would allow a “flusher”—the term for a volunteer who rounds up nonvoters on Election Day—to know exactly who had, and had not, voted in real time. They dubbed it Project Houdini, because of the way names disappear off the list instantly once people are identified as they wait in line at their local polling station.
The Obama campaign had some serious techonology working for them. This was part of why I made fun of McCain for not knowing how to use a computer (and Palin not knowing how to securely use one).
It was an amazing GOTV (get out the vote) effort. For a quick example…if you signed up for their site (as I did) you would get lists of numbers to call and places to takes notes, all online and “live”. It didn’t work perfectly, but I think it was impressive enough, and effective enough, to gain some notoriety.
McCain also was reluctant to use Obama’s incendiary pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as a campaign issue. The Republican had set firm boundaries: no Jeremiah Wright; no attacking Michelle Obama; no attacking Obama for not serving in the military. McCain balked at an ad using images of children that suggested that Obama might not protect them from terrorism.
McCain did try to keep the thing clean. It wasn’t until the last few days that the real bad poo started flying. I’ll give this to McCain, he didn’t make this nearly as dirty as it could have gotten. He could have disgusted everyone, much, much more than he did. Many of his supporters wanted him to go there, and Palin pushed it, but he had he honor and the power to keep it (mostly) clean.
Obama was never inclined to choose Sen. Hillary Clinton as his running mate, not so much because she had been his sometime bitter rival on the campaign trail, but because of her husband.
Yea, I never thought HIllary was a real choice for VP. Maybe early on, but even then…the Bill factor would have been huge, and he would have overshadowed Obama in a lot of respects. Particulary because he would, like Hillary, have a unique place in American history…and one that would continue for another decade or more in the White House. That’s just too much Clinton for anyone.
McCain was dumbfounded when Congressman John Lewis, a civil-rights hero, issued a press release comparing the GOP nominee with former Alabama governor George Wallace, a segregationist infamous for stirring racial fears. McCain had devoted a chapter to Lewis in one of his books, “Why Courage Matters,” and had so admired Lewis that he had once taken his children to meet him.
This was because McCain wasn’t being told by the Secret Service about all the threats against Obama. There’s a decent chance that John Lewis might have… I *really* don’t think McCain understood how much anger and ignorance he was whipping up. I’m absolutely sure that Palin had *NO* idea what she was messin’ with. People where I live *ACT* when you tell them there is a threat to their country in the White House.
I did mention I’m from Dallas, right? This shit ain’t no joke.
On the night she officially lost the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton enjoyed a long and friendly phone conversation with McCain. Clinton was actually on better terms with McCain than she was with Obama. Clinton and McCain had downed shots together on Senate junkets; they regarded each other as grizzled veterans of the political wars and shared a certain disdain for Obama as flashy and callow.
And that disdain came through loud and clear. It came through in Clinton releasing Obama’s picture in “Muslim Garb” and it came through in McCain refusing to look at Obama in the first debate.
We heard you both, and we rejected it. You were the uppity ones.
When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, “I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’
So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that’s green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’
What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I fucking changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”
Note: I un-censored that bit. I hate the those fucking “—” when I really want to make a point.
I *really* want to hear this tape. When I hear Obama talk, I often hear myself thinking. This has been a rare thing for me in the political realm. When I hear Obama say somehing like this, and show a bit of that fire and disdain for the bullshit, I like him more.
How out of touch is Barack Obama? He’s so out of touch that he suggested that if all Americans inflated their tires properly and took their cars for regular tune-ups, they could save as much oil as new offshore drilling would produce. Gleeful Republicans have made this their daily talking point; Rush Limbaugh is having a field day; and the Republican National Committee is sending tire gauges labeled “Barack Obama’s Energy Plan” to Washington reporters.
I’m pretty sure his internal reaction to that non-controversy was something along the lines of “Niggaplease, these people have to be fucking retarded.”
HOUSTON — ExxonMobil (XOM), the world’s largest publicly traded oil company, reported income Thursday that shattered its own record for the biggest profit by a U.S. corporation, earning $14.83 billion in the third quarter.
Bolstered by summer’s record crude prices, the company said net income jumped nearly 58% to $2.86 a share in the July-September period. That compares with $9.41 billion, or $1.70 a share, a year ago.
The previous record for U.S. corporate profit was set in the last quarter, when ExxonMobil earned $11.68 billion.
A couple things to point out here real quick, first up is the fact that net income (profit) rose 58% while revenue (total income) only went up 35%. That means that Exxon, already setting records for profits, has been increasing their profit margin over the last year.
Despite the surge in profit, Exxon said oil production was down 8% in the third quarter, compared to the same period last year.
So just to set this straight, Exxon made record profits, in the billions, by producing less oil than they did last year.
You know what’s better than working less and making more? Having an entire political party trying to help you make even more money with less work, and cut your taxes, while you sit on an ever growing pile of cash.
Let’s see what the business response would be to “Drill, Baby, Drill.”…
Big Oil: Sure, we’ll drill, baby. When we’re good and ready and the price of oil is both high enough and stable enough to ensure a healthy return. What? You think you can order us to drill? HAHAHA!!! This isn’t socialism, you can’t control industry through democracy.
Now give us those leases, stat!
I keep hearing that the secret to success and energy independence is drilling, working hard, and tax cuts. Yet I what I see here is something working less, producing less oil, getting tax cuts, and RAKING IN BILLIONS OF DOLLARS of profits.
And speaking of McCain’s tax cuts, meant to reward hard working small businesses, doan’cha know. Here’s who gets most of ’em.
The Verdict: True. Obama’s statement accurately reflects two studies of McCain’s tax proposals.
So the idea here is to give Exxon a tax break in order to “motivate” them to work harder…after they’ve already realized, much like OPEC, that they can make more money by producing less. Nice. Not bad work if you can find it.
Guess who else gets to enjoy McCain’s tax cut reward for their hard work?
Oct. 27 (Bloomberg) — Five straight quarters of losses and a 70 percent slide in its stock this year haven’t stopped Merrill Lynch & Co. from allocating about $6.7 billion to pay bonuses.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley, both still on track for profitable years, have set aside about $13 billion for bonuses after three quarters, down 28 percent from a year ago. Even some employees at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., which declared the biggest bankruptcy in U.S. history last month, will get the same bonus they received a year ago.
The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, a $700 billion taxpayer bailout, public outcry over excessive pay and the demise of three of the biggest securities firms won’t deter Wall Street from offering year-end rewards to employees on top of their salaries, compensation experts say.
These are the kind of people that *really* benefit from McCain’s tax cuts, and have enjoyed *tremendous* benefits from Bush’s tax cuts…but I repeat myself.
The City of Dallas recently laid off over 400 teachers because of a $65 million shortfall for the year. Over the last 90 days Exxon made of profit of about $1,900 a second. That’s over $150 million a day. In profit.
Exxon is based in Dallas County.
Doesn’t it seem like, oh, I don’t know…rational public policy…to actually bring in enough money in taxes to pay for public services?
Some might say the market should solve the problem, but I would rather tax Exxon and have Dallas county schools, than cut taxes on Exxon and get Exxon-branded Education Centers. And DISD isn’t even that good a school district. It did, however, get shafted like the rest of the country by No Child Left Behind, which was underfunded….BECAUSE OF TAX CUTS.
Giving even more tax cuts to Exxon and Goldman Sachs and their respective execs is not doing to do a damn thing to motivate them to work harder.
Making sure your kids, and your neighbor’s kids, have FREAKING TEACHERS in school trumps “executive compensation” in my humble opinion.
Giving massive tax cuts to folks who squeeze the commodity market and sell bullshit securities, while our schools and fire departments lay off people, doesn’t seem like sound public policy to me.
Maybe my priorities are wrong. Maybe if I believed that the highest ideal a human could strive for was “Profit, baby, profit” I could go along with McCain’s tax policy.
This is the latest ad from the Obama campaign. You’ll probably see it on TV, but I think it does a good job of exposing the choice of “winkie” and how that reflects on McCain.
The McCain / Palin Campaign Debacle continued to roll through like the, pardon my French but there’s no better word…clusterfuck that it is.
This particular post is going to be mostly focused on the interview the McCain / Palin “Team” gave to NBC (GE)’s Brian Williams, and some of the questions is raises about John McCain’s historical responses to crises. There’s also some Palin bits at the end, just for fun.
Also, after much searching a bullshit, I was able to find Joe Biden’s full quote, which I think I’ve only heard once, and then it was lost in a sea of political rhetoric.
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We’ll start with McCain being “tested” during the Cuban Missile Crisis. From the transcript…
WILLIAMS: You mention Senator Biden’s comment the other day about a new president and a test of the new president’s mettle. One of your very closest friends in the Senate, Joe Lieberman, said on “Face the Nation,” quote, “Our enemies will test the new president early.”
And it has happened throughout modern history.
MCCAIN: Well, look, I’ve been tested. They know me, they know me very well. I’ve been tested. Senator Biden said it. What if Sarah or I had said it? Oh, my God, it would have been terrible, imagine. His own running mate said it’s because he’s young and new and untested. That’s why Senator Biden said, “Mark my words,” “Mark my words,” is what he said, that there’s going to be an international crisis. And then he compared it to the Cuban Missile Crisis.
My friend, I was in the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was on the aircraft carrier “Enterprise” in the air wing. We were close to nuclear war. I wouldn’t predict that for me — I mean, that’s remarkable. When a vice presidential candidate predicts, because a young, untested president is going to face an international crisis like the Cuban Missile Crisis? Unbelievable.
Americans know I’ve been tested.
We’ll get to Senator Biden’s oft-repeated, always-shortened, “gaffe” in a moment, but right now I want to focus on McCain. Note how McCain brings up his experience during the Cuban Missile Crisis [refresher] to say how he, himself, was tested.
McCain is on record, and on YouTube, retellng his experience on the “Enterprise” (and yes, it’s just coincidence that I watched Star Trek II: The Wrath of McKahn this morning) . You should watch that war story retelling now. Watch it all the way to the end, so you get to the part how he wanted to respond to the “test”.
It should be noted that the Cuban Missile Crisis occured in 1962. John S. McCain was born in 1936. He was, therefore, 25 or 26 at the time. This was five years before he would be captured in Vietnam.
In response to the follow-up question, McCain says:
Sure, we were tense, because we listened to what the President had to say, and we had targets in Cuba, and you had your planes loaded with weapons to deliver.
But I also have to tell ya, when you’re that age, there’s a certain spirit of excitement and adventure, and that’s what you’re trying to do. As so, it was also some enthusiasm for carrying out our mission.
So when he was faced with nuclear war, McCain wanted to start bombing. He was kinda excited about it.
The carcass of a black bear that had been shot in the head was found wrapped in Sen. Barack Obama campaign signs on a North Carolina campus on Monday, Greenville station WYFF reported.
The 4-foot-by-8-foot Barack Obama campaign sign that McLaughlin had posted in the front yard of his Chesterfield County home was gone.
A Confederate flag hung in its place.
Surveying the scene that night, McLaughlin, 78, a Baptist minister and an Army veteran who lived to see the first black person nominated to a major-party ticket, had a message for whoever left the flag, viewed by many as a symbol of racial oppression: “I love you, and God does, too.”
Hmm, I guess that’s actually a pretty good way to respond to this kind of crap.
One other way is to point out the truth of things…which is where I’m going to address the Biden comment. As most the vast majority of political gaffes, this one is all based on the editing.
Now…I’m going to edit in all the parts of the this interview where they make Biden’s comment the new centerpoint of a failing campaign. It’s a decent idea on one side…but the basis of it is a falsehood. I’ve already illustrated how McCain responded to Kennedy’s test.
Before we get to the edits, here is how he responded to George W. Bush’s test, 9/11 (yea, that’s right, it fits, sadly).
On the morning of the 9/11, just moments after the World Trade Center collapsed from the terrorist strikes, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) went on television and immediately began focusing the nation’s attention on Iraq. In an interview with CBS’ Dan Rather on 9/11, McCain said:
To be honest with you, Dan, I never thought that an operation of this sophistication and size would take place. I just never did. But I don’t think there’s any doubt that there are countries — Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea and others — who we know engage in proliferation of — of capabilities and, from time to time, involve themselves in state-sponsored terrorism. But never did we imagine on a scale such as this.
The next day, on 9/12, McCain reiterated the point in an interview with Chris Matthews. “It isn’t just Afghanistan,” he said, “we’re talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others.”
So that’s 2 out of 2 for “Let’s Go To War!”
How about the Hostage Crisis?
Looks like he was just kinda mis-remembering that one.
This is getting much longer that I anticipated, I hadn’t realized McCain had done so poorly on these tests.
I was going to make fun of Palin for this…
and
But now it just seems like I’m piling on.
I will say this, however, because of her interview response…
WILLIAMS: Governor Palin, yesterday you tied this notion of an early test to the new president with this notion of preconditions that you both have been hammering the Obama campaign on. What — first of all, what, in your mind, is a precondition?
PALIN: You have to have some diplomatic strategy going into a meeting with someone like Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong Il, one of these dictators that would seek to destroy America or her allies. It is so naive and so dangerous for a presidential candidate to just proclaim that they would be willing to sit down with a leader like Ahmadinejad and just talk about the problems, the issues that are facing them.
So that’s some ill-preparedness right there. But following up with your comment about Biden also, when Biden — what he had done the other night to his Democrat donors, in talking to them in a fund- raiser, warning them saying, “Mark my word, there will be an international crisis if Barack Obama is elected,” he was confirming what he had been saying all along in the primary race.
He had warned voters that Barack was not prepared yet to be president, and that the presidency is not a place for on-the-job training. So there was confirmation that in the comments that he made.
First up, Ahmadinejad isn’t a dictator, and real power in Iran is with the Supreme Commander (or whatever his made-up title is) but pointing that out 100 times won’t work, so I’m going to point out the rest of Joe Biden’s quote, since nobody seems to be able to remember the whole thing.
Mark my words. Within the next, first six months of this administration, if we win, they’re going to — we’re going to face a major international challenge. Because they’re going to want to test him, just like they did young John Kennedy. They’re going to want to test him. And they’re going to find out this guy’s got steel in his spine.
Nice, huh?
Quote the set-up, forget the punchline, and tell the joke over and over. It would work if this was a b.s. election year with a budget surplus and no real problems (i.e. like 2000). Did you hear Al Gore designed, built, and deployed the Internets? Yup, tuned every dump truck himself.
I wonder if they’re doing this to try and keep people from looking into how McCain has done on life’s previous “tests”.
He graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the academy, and seems to have stayed fairly consistent since.
Here’s a video I put together to try and encapuslate my argument. It’s a bit short in a number of areas (as I self-critique the finished product), but I think I covered many of the things I’ve written about in the video.
Enjoy and share. I should have the other side of this argument done by the end of the week.
This is the week where a whole bunch of newspapers come out with their endorsements, so I figured I would do the same.
COLIN POWELL: And I’ve also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that’s been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that’s inappropriate.
Now, I understand what politics is all about. I know how you can go after one another, and that’s good. But I think this goes too far. And I think it has made the McCain campaign look a little narrow. It’s not what the American people are looking for. And I look at these kinds of approaches to the campaign and they trouble me. And the party has moved even further to the right, and Governor Palin has indicated a further rightward shift. I would have difficulty with two more conservative appointments to the Supreme Court, but that’s what we’d be looking at in a McCain administration. I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is?
Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
I feel particularly strong about this because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who were serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay, was of a mother at Arlington Cemetery and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone, and it gave his awards – Purple Heart, Bronze Star – showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death, he was 20 years old. And then at the very top of the head stone, it didn’t have a Christian cross. It didn’t have a Star of David. It has a crescent and star of the Islamic faith.
And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan. And he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was fourteen years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he could serve his country and he gave his life.”
I have to say, Powell did a fine job expressing himself. The inevitable cries of “Only Because He’s Black” came from the rushists of the world on que. People making that accusation missed the part of the story where Powell gave money to McCain back in his pre-racist, rational days on late 2007, when he was an American hero. Now he’s just another racist shill, according the right wing media elite.
And McCain’s Response….”I don’t care about Ayers, let’s talk about Ayers!”, “The attacks on me in 2000 by the same people I hired in 2008 are totally different that what I defend now.” “I’m a victim of racism.”
I think the most hypocritical statement of McCain’s (of many) is how personally insulted he is being associated with people that would bomb innocent people. He’s probably worried since racists bombed and killed an infinite number more people in the incident mentioned [4] than the Weather Underground ever did in their reign of terror [0].
Many people, McCain/Palin foremost amoung them, seem to forget that the Weather Underground was a bunch of pansy liberals who warned people before they blew stuff up and schemed endlessly to avoid civilian casualties. Actually, considering how “effective” McCain’s terrorist attacks have been on Obama, my guess is that most people realize this (or how long ago it was and how remote the “connection” is), and consider it a non-issue.
It looks like the latest strategery has been set in place for the McCain / Palin Campaig final two-week sprint.
From the looks of things, it’s a steady diet of the same: Smear, Lie, and Obfuscate. From an objective viewpoint, it seems like they are sticking with the same general plan I mentioned before and running against one another.
Several top Republicans, including Senators Susan Collins and Norm Coleman, have condemned the tactic. Asked about those criticisms, Palin at first dismissed the matter as “inside baseball stuff” and said it’s “some of the campaign top brass’s call on that.”
But when asked if she would approve the use of robocalls if she were running the campaign, Palin said she’d probably chart a different course.
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Ultimately, the Alaska governor said she was not calling for an end to the automated calls, and she did not say if she had spoken to campaign officials at any point about the calls.
Nice, huh? First she says they suck, then she says she wouldn’t use them, then she says that she hasn’t done anything to stop them. Guess what I cut out…the part where she blames them on Obama.
“[The American People] get a bit irritated with just being inundated,” she continued, “and you’re seeing a lot of that of course with the huge amounts of money that Barack Obama is able to spend on his ads and his robocalls also.”
I haven’t seen anything about Obama robocalls from anyone except Free Republic (which I feel dirty linking to…but is the only thing I’ve found online that makes the accusation). The rest of the google turns up empty. At least now we know what Internet sites Sarah Palin reads.
Go and check out Free Republic some time. I dare you to read a whole thread on Obama or the Democrats, which is to say in Freeperville, PURE UNADULTERATED EVIL.
I wonder if anyone will follow up Palin’s hollow accusation regarding the robo-calls? I know the media *refuses* to follow up the allegation that Obama is a terrorist Muslim (and by “follow-up”, I’m using the Right-Wingian definition which translates to “Pass along rumors without research” in English), but maybe they could call St. Sarah out for this bold…assertion…based on what, exactly? Hmmm?
And yes, it does get better and more hypocritical. Are you ready for another round of Republican Scarewords: The Home Game!. That’s right, it time for another All-American episde SCAREWORDS!!
The scareword for the day is SOCIALIST!!!!!
Palin was also asked if she and McCain believe that Barack Obama’s tax plan, which would raise taxes on Americans making over $250,000 and provide tax credits to middle and lower-income workers, is SOCIALIST. At a campaign rally in New Mexico earlier Sunday, Palin said Obama wants to “experiment with SOCIALISM.”
“There are SOCIALIST principles to that, yes,” Palin said of Obama’s plan. “Taking more from a small business or small business owners or from a hard working family and then redistributing that money according to a politician’s priorities. There are hints of SOCIALSIM in there.”
Before we continue… a poll….
The questions for Sarah continued….And, BTW, this all happened when she tried to answer questions directly from the press. It’s why she contradicts herself from moment to moment. Asking questions like this are what journalists are supposed to do. It helps to find out if the hamsters upstairs are working, or just reading cue cards.
Asked if she thinks the government’s plan to inject billions of taxpayer dollars directly into troubled banks amounts to socialism — a belief held by many conservative legislators, talk radio hosts and bloggers — Palin said, “No, I do not.”
“I believe that there are those measures that had to be taken by congress to shore up not only the housing market but the credit markets also, to make sure that that’s not frozen, so that our small businesses have opportunities to borrow, and that was the purpose, of course, and that part of the bailout and the shoring of the banks,” she said.
To this anyone should scratch their heard. If you just reverse a couple of paragraphs, she’s saying the same thing backwards.
“I believe that there are those measures that had to be taken by congress to shore up not only the housing market but the credit markets also, to make sure that that’s not frozen, so that our small businesses have opportunities to borrow, and that was the purpose, of course, and that part of the bailout and the shoring of the banks,” she said.
“There are socialist principles to that, yes,” Palin said of [The Government’s] plan. “Taking more from a small business or small business owners or from a hard working family and then redistributing that money according to a politician’s priorities. There are hints of socialism in there.”
UPDATE: The previous bouts of hypocrisy and SCAREWORDS!! came from Colorado. The game continues from New Mexico. The game has evolved. Palin is now going after all three men in the campaign.
“Barack Obama calls it spreading the wealth. Joe Biden calls higher taxes patriotic,” Palin said. “But Joe the Plumber and Ed the Dairyman, I believe they think it sounds more like SOCIALISM.
“Friends, now is no time to experiment with SOCIALISM,” she told the cheering crowd.
She then continued her attacks on the Senator from Arizona that voted for the SOCIALIST bailout plan.
“Our opponents keep saying, ‘No, no, no,’ to sound and responsible energy solutions,” she said.
Yes, I know (and fact-checked) McCain’s record of voting against alternative energy consistently….
Obama said that McCain had voted 23 times against alternative energy:
Obama: Over 26 years, Senator McCain voted 23 times against alternative energy, like solar, and wind, and biodiesel.
Here’s the Obama campaign’s list of the 23 votes. We find they’re overstating the case. In many instances, McCain voted not against alternative energy but against mandatory use of alternative energy, or he voted in favor of allowing exemptions from these mandates. Only 11 of the 23 votes cited by the Obama campaign involve reducing or eliminating incentives for renewable energy.
Meanwhile, McCain was indignant at the suggestion that he’d voted against alternative energy at all.
McCain: I have voted for alternate fuel all of my time. … No one can be opposed to alternate energy.
But McCain’s record says differently. As we say above, he has voted against funding for alternative energy on 11 occasions. He may be in favor of alternative energy in theory, but he has declined opportunities to support it.
Colin Powell was pretty much the only one to “survive” the Bush Admistration, in terms of positive public opinion. Powell endorsed Obama for many of the reasons I raised in the title of this post. He called out McCain for the b.s. campaign, and Palin for being an unqualified neophyte. Powell said we should talk to our enemies and while he loves John McCain, like Joe Biden, he thinks a McCain Presidency would probably be a disaster on a number of fronts (economic, international, etc.).
Robot Pirate Ninja 
