Sarah Palin: Ignorance In Action

  Let's forget about the past Presidential debate and the $ 700 Billion Wall Street bailout for a minute, shall we?

  As the readers know, I usually like to post an article from some of the newspapers from overseas and from across the border just to see what they think of our lives here in America and especially for their views concerning our race for the White House.

  Here is an article which popped up a few days ago in La Presse, from Canada. This concerns the Republican V.P. pick, Sarah Palin.

  Posted at Watching America

Ignorance in Action

By Nicolas Berube
Translated By Louis Standish
September 25, 2008
Canada - La Presse - Original Article (French)
"There is nothing more terrifying than seeing ignorance in action," comedian Tommy Smothers said when accepting his Emmy award last Sunday in Los Angeles.
Mr. Smothers didn’t utter any names - the organizers of the awards ceremony didn’t want any live political commentary. But then why say something everybody knows?
The smoke raised by the nomination of Sarah Palin has subsided in the United States. Almost a month later, Americans don’t like what they see. McCain’s running mate attracted passionate crowds early on, but aside from the religious Republican base, no one else seemed to take the bait. For 10 days, the favorability numbers for the McCain-Palin ticket in every poll are in free-fall.
Even undecideds seem to be fleeing from the conservative duo. That’s what the Florida newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times discovered, which has been tracking a barometer of undecided voters since the beginning of the summer.
Last week, the newspaper was surprised to see that the majority of polled undecideds felt insulted by Palin’s candidacy.
"I am truly offended by Sarah Palin," said Philinia Lehr, 37, a Republican mother of five who voted for Bush in the previous elections. In her opinion, a mother of five children doesn’t have any time for a demanding position like the vice-presidency of the United States. “What is she going to say if her newborn has a problem? Excuse me, my fellow Americans, I’m busy?”
This week, Palin wrote a new chapter in the history of the United States: she is the first vice-presidential candidate to refuse media questioning.
You read that right: almost a month after being nominated, Gov. Palin has held only one press conference. Case in point, Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, has held more than 50 since August.
Media Revolt
The situation has otherwise led to a mini-revolt on Tuesday: reporters who follow Palin’s itinerary have threatened to stop writing or reporting anything about her if they don’t have access to her meetings with various heads of state in New York. Journalists were finally given access for about 29 seconds before being ordered out.
The exasperation spilled over onto CNN, where anchor Campbell Brown spoke directly to the camera, telling the McCain campaign to “liberate Sarah Palin.”
"Frankly, I’ve had it up to here," she said. "I’ve had enough of the sexist treatment of Sarah Palin. The McCain campaign keeps us from asking her questions, like she’s a sensitive little flower that has to be protected. It’s disrespectful towards her. Free Sarah Palin from the chains of chauvinism. Sexism has no place in this campaign."
Several commentators notice that McCain’s strategists no doubt have excellent reasons to shield Gov. Palin from the media. Apparently, she doesn’t have the required knowledge to handle any prolonged questioning.
For example, Gov. Palin continued this week to assert that Alaska’s relative proximity to Russia gives her foreign policy experience.
"Anyone who dares emphasize that that explanation doesn’t make sense is an elitist,” Sam Harris wrote in Newsweek, in a long article on the depressed expectations of the Republicans. He finds it scandalous that McCain’s running mate got her first passport just last year. "What troubles me is everything that Gov. Palin does not know: markets, financiers, the environment, the Middle East, the Cold War, Islam, medical research, etc. Her ignorance doesn’t come from not having the time to read the paper in the morning. Sarah Palin’s ignorance comes from how she’s spent her 44 years on Earth," he wrote.
It all starts looking like a sketch from "Saturday Night Live" -- the audience’s laughter at least.

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Technorati Tags: Sarah Palin,John McCain,Campbell Brown,Vice President,2008 election

House GOP Idea: Change Bailout Plan, Make Sure McCain Is Credited For It

  Common Dreams

Published on Saturday, September 27, 2008 by Politico.com

House GOP Plan: Reshape Bailout, Be Sure McCain Gets Credit

by Patrick O'Connor

Congressional negotiators are back at work on a bailout deal as House Republicans pursue a two-track strategy: Shape the plan to their liking, and make sure John McCain gets some of the credit.

Demonstrators protest in front of the New York Stock Exchange against the $700bln Wall Street bailout plan on September 25. (AFP/File/Nicholas Roberts)

Aides to the House-Senate negotiating team met until 1:40 a.m. Saturday morning and are back at the Capitol now. A meeting of principals - Sens. Chris Dodd and Judd Gregg, Reps. Barney Frank and Roy Blunt - could come Saturday afternoon, with leaders still hoping for a vote before the markets open Monday.

McCain arrived back in Washington just before dawn on Saturday, and his campaign said he planned to "resume negotiations with the administration and congressional leaders from both parties to forge a bipartisan solution to our economic crisis."

Republicans are clearly worried that their presidential candidate's first effort to engage in the bailout negotiations didn't come off as well as they might have hoped - that in the public's mind, a deal was close until McCain parachuted in, a White House meeting collapsed and McCain left for the debate in Mississippi with the various factions farther from a deal than they'd been before.

House Republicans are now trying hard to recast those events.

What actually happened, they say: By not taking a stand on the modified version of the Treasury plan that Democrats, Senate Republicans and the White House seemed nearly ready to support, McCain gave House Republican the time they needed to force a better deal for taxpayers and homeowners alike.

During a brief session in the Capitol on Friday, McCain reminded a small band of Republican leaders that he had given them a political opening in the landmark legislative fight.

According to people present, McCain then told his congressional colleagues, "Now, go get something."

McCain had swept into town Thursday morning like a conquering hero, poised to save the economy - and, by turns, his presidential campaign.

Democrats derided his decision as a blatantly political - and completely unnecessary - maneuver.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) joked that McCain's gesture reminded him of the late-comedian Andy Kaftans doing his famously understated rendition of the Mighty Mouse theme, "Here I Come to Save the Day."

"We are making very real progress," Frank said at the time. "This is a stunt. I hope people will be able to ignore it. He doesn't bring anything to it."

While McCain greeted his top allies on Capitol Hill, lawmakers were working toward a compromise deal in a bipartisan, bicameral meeting. When that meeting ended, both Dodd, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Sen. Bob Bennett, a Republican from Utah, said that negotiators had agreed on a plan that could pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president.

Gregg, a Republican from New Hampshire, told Politico Friday that the compromise wouldn't have come together so quickly if Democrats didn't know that McCain was on his way. "We wouldn't have had as much movement [Thursday] as we did have, if he hadn't come to town and some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle wanted to upstage him," Gregg said.

With the deal struck, Republicans in the House believed that the trap was set, not so much for McCain as for their own leader, Ohio Rep. John A. Boehner.

As House Republicans saw it, Democrats and the White House were close to a deal and just needed McCain to sign on so they could roll Boehner under the bus and claim a bipartisan victory.

Boehner himself had emerged from a brief meeting with McCain earlier that day in his Capitol office unsure what the presidential candidate would do.

But if the Democrats and the White House were ready for a game of "ganging up on Boehner" - as the minority leader said later - McCain didn't play along.

At the White House, Bush beseeched lawmakers to join him in announcing progress toward a deal. According to one report, the president asked, "Can't we just all go out and say things are OK?"

But McCain said little during the White House meeting. And when it ended, neither he nor Bush nor Barack Obama said anything at all to the reporters waiting outside in the rain.

In a statement, the McCain campaign said the meeting "was spent fighting over who would get the credit for a deal and who would get the blame for failure."

Most important: "There was no deal or offer yesterday that had a majority of support in Congress."

That play gave Boehner, whose rank and file was in an open revolt against the Bush administration plan, more room and more time to operate.

It's not what House Republicans were expecting. McCain has a strained relationship with many of his GOP colleagues, some of whom view him as a political opportunist who chooses personal glory over partisan loyalty.

Asked before the White House meeting if McCain would have any effect on the debate over this bailout, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said, "No."

"The Democrats and the White House want everyone to go down there and have a big group hug," Brady said of that meeting. "I'm not so sure he's going to be a part of that group hug."

Boehner himself had said he didn't know what whether McCain could help.

Republicans acknowledge that McCain's first trip back to Washington didn't shift votes in either direction; even they acknowledge that they don't know what, exactly, their presidential candidate thinks of the Treasury plan. But they credit McCain with creating an opening they didn't have before.

"[The trip] played a very important role in elevating this to a serious crisis for most voters," Putnam said.

Gregg agreed, saying that the trip focused voters' attention on the financial problem in a way that nothing else had: "People suddenly said, ‘Oh wow, this must be really, really bad if you've got both presidential campaigns . . . coming to Washington," Gregg said.

On Friday morning, McCain paid Boehner a follow-up visit in the leader's large Capitol suite. They were joined by Putnam, Blunt - the GOP whip - and his chief deputy, Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, who played a central role crafting the Republicans' alternative.

The presidential candidate told the assembled congressional leaders that he was initially skeptical about Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's grave economic warnings, but that he became convinced after a series of briefings that the need was very real. Congress had to pass something over the weekend, McCain said.

But he told the group that Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had a choice: She could either allow her negotiators to craft a package that Republicans would accept, or she could make it a partisan vote by attaching the plan to a must-pass stop-gap funding bill that lawmakers from both parties would be compelled to support.

If she chose the latter category, McCain told the Republican leaders that they could vote against the hugely unpopular measure and he would help them make that vote a campaign issue on the trail.

Before he left, he told the group that he needed to fly to Mississippi for the first presidential debate, so he wouldn't be sticking around either way.

But, he told them, "You guys need a negotiator."

That same morning, Boehner tapped Blunt to fill the role, jump-starting a legislative conversation that had stalled; just the night before, House Republicans had refused to send a representative to a meeting with Paulson, the Democrats and Senate Republicans.

Democrats now say it's possible that deal could come together in time for votes Sunday. Blunt, appearing on Fox News on Saturday morning, seemed less optimistic and warned that Monday's market opening could yet come and go without a deal.

"I think if it doesn't happen on Sunday, it won't happen until Thursday or Friday," he said. "At the end of the day, it'd be better to get it done right than get it done quickly."

                                     © 2008 Politico.com

Technorati Tags: John McCain,GOP,Nancy Pelosi,Barney Frank,Bailout,2008 election