Palin's First Gaffe...Awww....Good Thing Someone Had a Camera

Here is an article from the Huffington Post (yes, I know, they're lefties) talking about Palin's first "gaffe" in making the comment about the takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as having "gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers."

The audio is really quiet on the video clip, so here's a transcript of the full quote:

A man with such strength of heart understands people, and the problems that we're all facing these days. He understands what to do about job losses and high energy prices and mortgage failures, the problems faced by hard-working, middle-class Americans--all of us! And that's why John McCain has been calling for years to reform things and cut bureaucracy, even at the lending agencies that our government supports. The fact is that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac--they've gotten too big and too expensive to the taxpayers. (cheers) The McCain-Palin administration will make them smaller and smarter and more effective for homeowners who need help.

And McCain agreed with her.

Why is this such a big deal? Well, because Fannie and Freddie aren't even under government control...yet. See, they just signed a deal to LET the government take control and will NOW be taxpayer FUNDED, whereas before it was taxpayer GUARANTEED, meaning that they could be bailed out by tax funds or lowered interest rates in extreme circumstances. Maybe that's what Sarah Plain was talking about, right? Riiiiggggghhtttt.....

The rub here is that, if Palin is going to be VP, shouldn't she know what she's talking about BEFORE she gets into office?

A favorite quote from this article:

"You would like to think that someone who is going to be vice president and conceivable president would know what Fannie and Freddie do," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. "These are huge institutions and they are absolutely central to our country's mortgage debt. To not have a clue what they do doesn't speak well for her, I'd say."

And, does the fact that McCain just nodded his head in agreement scare anyone else? Anybody...anybody?

Paging Sarah Plain, Gov. Sarah Palin, Please Open Your Bible

An observation "overheard" on Chris Cillizza's The Fix blog Thursday morning after Sarah Palin's speech condemning Obama's experience as a community organizer:

"Jesus Christ was a community organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor."

Thanks to "Laura", wherever you are.

Also, while we're speaking of faith, as Mrs. Palin steadfastly scrubs and hyperbolizes her record among the voters and judiciously avoids the press, maybe someone should ask her about the following two issues.

The first of two items from NPR considers her background as a member of the Pentecostal church and what it could mean to her views on foreign policy and energy issues. See, we've been down this road before and...yeah...it didn't work out too well, so...

And the other item from NPR concerns the younger Palin's pregnancy and how it could be an opening for sex ed. discussions among parents and their children, and the communities they live in.

Palin's Community Organizer Jokes Really Land

Hopefully, Gov. Sarah Palin will take her jokes about Obama's community organizer past on the road. Now, THAT is comedy gold, my friends. If she keeps this up, she'll be hailed as a comedic genius.

If she's such a quick study, maybe she can turn her scripted speeches into a stand-up career when this VP thing falls flat.

How Many Trees Are There in St. Paul?

Hey Ryan,

Tonight, I'm sitting here, typing and suffering through the RNC broadcast. It's hard because I want to call it right down the middle. I want to give both parties a fair listen. But I'm finding it hard to do. Are you? Sometimes, I wish I could just take it in and realize that it's politics...it's the way the game is played. But I have a hard time with that because I worry about the country. I'm not just interested in winning or losing in a sporting sense, like a lot of those muffler heads on the convention floor. Because they and the lobbyists standing next to them can cheer and vote for the ONE issue they've actually studied all they want, but we're the ones who'll end up suffering for it.

To me, John McCain and Sarah Palin look like a ventriloquist act that has been prematurely shoved into the spotlight. And I can't tell who's the dummy. Their calls for change are hollow. Their claims of being mavericks who buck against corruption are, at best, empty, if not outright lies.

And you know what kills me? The media pundits just let it all pass. For all the media persecution the Republicans claim for Palin, the media's "analysis" of her speech is awfully kind, centering solely on delivery and NOT content. Even PBS, a channel that usually has both the most civil discussions and the most integrity of the news channels, didn't even touch the core ideas in her speech. Rather, the various "experts" talked about who her presentation was directed at, and whether she hit the right notes with the "hockey moms".

Hockey moms? Are those like the fabled "security moms" of 2004? And where have the "security moms" gone? Are they satisfied now that the surge is finally starting to work? And...is the surge actually working?

That's the thing with Republicans: they hide behind all these trees and never consider the forest. And just when you think you've found them, they run to another tree, and then another, and then another, until you get too tired to keep searching. They bank on that...the fact that, sooner or later, EVERYONE gets tired of looking...even people who get paid to look.

Last night and tonight, they went back to a few old trees and found a new one. Bush trotted out 9/11 in his beamed in message last night. And then, of course, Giuliani dropped his bombs tonight. Good ol' "Noun, Verb, 9/11" Rudy. I swear, that guy could work 9/11 into his grocery list. But they know that one's starting to fall apart. From all the books and information that has come out since that day, it's obvious that Bush's government (and the Republicans, in general) viewed that tragedy and those thousands of casualties as useful. In a sense, it seems as though they were kind of hoping this would be yet another pocket issue they could put away every year the morning after election day, only to pull it out again when the next election cycle comes around.

They do that with gay marriage and abortion and guns. They flash them around like tin foil, hoping that the voters won't notice other issues that they can't put a terribly positive spin on...like wiretapping or torture, not to mention the true intentions and execution of their war.

But, God love them, they came up with another issue this past weekend: sexism. After all of the sexist comments their shills had for Hillary Clinton, they finally found a way to use it. This is a party who has never seen a working woman it wanted to get equal wages for and it has the nerve to brand the criticism of Palin this past weekend sexist?

Sure, the question of whether she could adequately care for her kids and run for VP was blatantly sexist. There's no denying that. But, the pregnancy stories have a few more gray areas than the media and the candidates are willing to admit. While I don't want to know the details of her daughter's pregnancy, I do think that more people should be talking about the fact that Palin preaches an abstinence-only, education- and contraception-free approach to sex for teens, and yet, there is an example in her own family that points to the failure of such a policy. The first (and best) article I've seen about this is by Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post, and I hope more people follow her lead, especially the TV news media. I know that kind of nuance is hard for them to squeeze ratings out of, but maybe they'll start, I don't know, DOING their job.


Charles