tagged w/ Grannie Moosebreath
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Tell us why this is interestingRepublican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr. each sought to claim the mantle of "kitchen table" candidate in the first and only debate between the major-party vice presidential candidates last night, both arguing that their running mates better understand the concerns of middle-class Americans worried about the nation's faltering economy.
On a night when presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama were relegated to the sidelines, Palin and Biden raced through a fast-paced debate that touched on same-sex marriage, the war in Iraq, and the nation's energy and foreign policies. Each escaped without major mishap, and Palin seemed to repair an image that had been damaged by recent media interviews and increasing public doubts about her readiness for the nation's No. 2 job.
From the opening moments of their highly anticipated 90-minute debate, each portrayed themselves as a voice for Middle America and attempted to make the case that their ticketmates are best prepared to bring change to Washington and the nation.
Palin, the first female governor of Alaska, referred to "average, middle-class families like mine," and in her first answer she suggested that the proper place to take the temperature of Americans' concerns about the economy would be at a Saturday-morning soccer game.
"Now, thankfully, John McCain has been one representing reform," Palin said. "People in the Senate, his colleagues" -- she turned to the senator from Delaware -- "didn't want to listen to him and wouldn't go towards that reform that was needed."
Biden trained his fire on McCain, noting that the senator from Arizona "two Mondays ago" claimed that the "fundamentals of the economy were strong."
He added: "That doesn't make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he's out of touch."
The debate, with its emphasis on quick answers and numerous topics, became a barrage of numbers and competing and conflicting visions of Obama and McCain.
Likely to be more lasting for viewers was the lack of obvious mistakes on either side, and an image of Palin that was more like the confident, smiling politician who burst onto the scene with a fiery speech at the Republican National Convention, and less like the stumbling candidate who has seemed ill prepared in a series of interviews broadcast recently with CBS News anchor Katie Couric.
She was respectful and cordial to Biden -- "Hey, can I call you Joe?" she asked when she greeted him onstage -- but quick to try to put him on the defensive about his past differences with Obama. "I watched all those debates," she said, referring to the Democratic primaries in which the two were rivals.
But the essence of the night -- and one of the major arguments of the campaign -- may have been illustrated by a long exchange after Biden said policies of the Bush administration have been an "abject failure."
"There's a time, too, when Americans are going to say, 'Enough is enough with your ticket,' on constantly looking backwards, and pointing fingers and doing the blame game," Palin said. "There have been huge blunders in the war. There have been huge blunders throughout this administration, as there are with every administration. But for a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there's just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that's where you're going."
**more at article**
Tell us why this is interestingRepublican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joseph R. Biden Jr.... more
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Story Highlights
51 percent say Democratic Sen. Joe Biden wins vice presidential debate
Republican Gov. Sarah Palin exceeds expectations, 84 percent say
Palin beats Biden on likability, 54-36
87 percent say Biden is qualified for job, 42 percent say Palin is
Next Article in Politics »
(CNN) -- A national poll of people who watched the vice presidential debate Thursday night suggests that Democratic Sen. Joe Biden won, but also says Republican Gov. Sarah Palin exceeded expectations.
Poll respondents give Sen. Joe Biden the edge over Gov. Sarah Palin in ability to express views.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. said 51 percent of those polled thought Biden did the best job, while 36 percent thought Palin did the best job.
But respondents said the folksy Palin was more likable, scoring 54 percent to Biden's 36 percent. Seventy percent said Biden was more of a typical politician.
Both candidates exceeded expectations -- 84 percent of the people polled said Palin did a better job than they expected, while 64 percent said Biden also exceeded expectations.
How Palin would perform had been a major issue for the Alaska governor, who had some well-publicized fumbles during interviews with CBS' Katie Couric leading up to the debate.
Respondents thought Biden was better at expressing his views, giving him 52 percent to Palin's 36 percent.
On the question of the candidates' qualifications to assume the presidency, 87 percent of those polled said Biden is qualified and 42 percent said Palin is qualified.
Story Highlights
51 percent say Democratic Sen. Joe Biden wins vice presidential... more
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Unbelievable. Sarah Palin finished her closing remarks by quoting Ronald Reagan:
It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it to them so that they shall do the same, or we’re going to find ourselves spending our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children about a time in America, back in the day, when men and women were free.
When did he say this? - Read The Rest at the Link...Unbelievable. Sarah Palin finished her closing remarks by quoting Ronald Reagan:
It... more
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Consider this:
1. McCain has a significant chance of dying in office.
2. Palin is a global warming denier.
3. If the the next president doesn’t provide very strong climate leadership at home and abroad then we have doomed our children and countless generations after them to ever worsening misery and suffering.
What is the morality of electing a President or Vice President who doesn’t understand the urgent need for very strong domestic action and international leadership to mitigate man-made climate change?
What does McCain’s choice of Palin say about whether he really considers global warming a priority issue, given that he put a global warming denier a heartbeat away from the presidency (see “No climate for old men“)? What does it say about his judgment? At least they found common, albeit Luddite, ground on renewable energy (see “Pork queen Palin is an earmark expert, NOT energy expert” and “The truly clean technologies don’t work”).
Let’s go through the three points:
1. Politico has published the actuarial analysis at “McCain and the politics of mortality“:
According to these statistics, there is a roughly 1 in 3 chance that a 72-year-old man will not reach the age of 80, which is how old McCain would be at the end of a second presidential term. And that doesn’t factor in individual medical history, such as McCain’s battles with potentially lethal skin cancer….
… for a man who has lived 72 years and 67 days (McCain’s age on Election Day this year), there is between a 14.2 and 15.1 percent chance of dying before Inauguration Day 2013
In short, there is a substantial chance that Palin could end up President.
2. Newsmax has Palin’s views on warming:
Q: What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?
A: A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being man-made.
This makes Palin a typical conservative. A recent poll revealed that only 27% of Republicans believe the earth is warming because of human activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels (see “The deniers are winning, especially with the GOP“). Needless to say, if humans aren’t the cause of global warming, then it’s a random cycle that will eventually reverse itself, so you’d be crazy to mandate sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions like McCain (says he) wants.
Despite all the conservative blather about family values, if you are global warming denier, then you simply don’t care about the nation’s or the world’s children.
3. “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment,” warned IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri last fall when the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its major multi-year report synthesizing our understanding of climate science. And remember that Pachauri was handpicked by the Bush administration to replace the “alarmist” Bob Watson. It’s the facts that make scientists alarmists, not their politics.
Only a president who understands that humans are the cause of global warming can provide the aggressive leadership needed to achieve deep greenhouse gas emissions cuts in this country — and convince the rest of the planet, including countries like China, India, and Russia to join us. Only genuine presidential leadership on climate can avert centuries of misery, including many tens of feet of sea level rise, loss of fresh water supplies to a billion people, desertification of one third the planet, and extinction of more than two thirds of all species on land and sea (see “Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 0: The alternative is humanity’s self-destruction“).Consider this:
1. McCain has a significant chance of dying in office.
2.... more
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Palin had told Katie Couric “I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate.”
The debate transcript reveals she still can’t get her talking points straight on this issue:
I’m not one to attribute every man — activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.
It’s “attribute changes in the climate to activity of man”!
And, of course she repeated the The Big Energy Lie that John McCain actually believes in an “all of the above” energy policy — twice:
John McCain is right there with an “all of the above” approach to deal with climate change impacts….
So even in dealing with climate change, it’s all the more reason that we have an “all of the above” approach,
Sorry, that’s a lie. In order to have an “all of the above” approach, McCain would have to be a supporter of renewable energy like wind and solar rather than one of the strongest Senate opponents of renewable energy with a voting record on energy that matches that of global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe – see”The greenwasher from Arizona has a record as dirty as the denier from Oklahoma” and The real, Luddite McCain says “The truly clean technologies don’t work.”
Related Posts:
* McCain’s lying ads have gone “too far” warns … Karl Rove!Palin had told Katie Couric “I’m not going to solely blame all of... more
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Vice-presidential debates are races for also-rans - the American political equivalent of third and fourth place play-offs in the football World Cup finals.
They normally generate interest levels to match.
But Campaign 2008 has been different all along - and the battle of the bottom of the ticket was different too, in this year of firsts.
Democrat Joe Biden and his Republican counterpart, Sarah Palin, are political polar opposites and they inhabit very different cultural galaxies but they do have one thing in common; they are united by a flair for the kind of political slips that can shape the destiny of campaigns in which hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested.
We don't know the exact figures yet but tens of millions of Americans will have watched the full 90 minutes last night.
And one more statistic we'll never know - how many watched in the hope that Mr Biden would strike a couple of bum notes or that Mrs Palin, who has floundered in recent television appearances, would simply implode and take the whole Republican campaign with her.
Many viewers will have stayed on to the end, watching as you watch high-wire artists performing without a net, with a guilty fascination at the possibility that one might fall. Vice-presidential debates are races for also-rans - the American political equivalent... more
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BuddyP
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added this
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3 years ago
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An Alaska judge refused Thursday to throw out subpoenas for members of Gov. Sarah Palin's administration in the State Legislature's investigation of her firing of her public safety commissioner.
Anchorage Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski rejected a request by Palin's Republican allies to shut down the investigation and ruled that the subpoenas were issued properly by the state Senate Judiciary Committee.
Kevin Clarkson, a lawyer for five GOP lawmakers who filed suit in September, said the date was arbitrarily chosen by the lawmakers overseeing the investigation.
"There's no magic to this October 10 date," Clarkson said. The bipartisan committee that authorized the investigation stated only that it be conducted "in a timely manner," he said.
Peter Maassen, the attorney for the lawmakers leading the inquiry, called the suit "a complete perversion of the process" and said the Legislature had the authority to conduct its investigation.
The former Anchorage prosecutor hired to conduct the investigation, Stephen Branchflower, is slated to complete his report by October 10. In an affidavit filed ahead of Thursday's hearing, he said he has begun to draft his report despite the refusal of several Palin aides and her husband, Todd, to comply with subpoenas issued by the state Senate Judiciary Committee.
Assistant Attorney General Jan Hart DeYoung had asked Michalski to dismiss the subpoenas for top seven members of Palin's administration, arguing that the committee had no authority to issue them.
Palin, now the Republican vice presidential nominee, sacked Public Service Commissioner Walt Monegan in July, citing disagreements over budget issues. But Monegan has said he believes that he was fired because he resisted pressure to fire Palin's ex-brother-in-law, State Trooper Mike Wooten. An Alaska judge refused Thursday to throw out subpoenas for members of Gov. Sarah... more
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bshipp
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added this
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3 years ago
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Link to this video Michael Tomasky reviews the performances of Sarah Palin and Joe Biden in the US vice-presidential debate
Link to this video Michael Tomasky reviews the performances of Sarah Palin and Joe... more
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Warning: may induce seizure
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That will buy quite a few six packs. The Palins own their lakefront house plus two vacation homes - yeah, she's a regular joe.That will buy quite a few six packs. The Palins own their lakefront house plus two... more
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