Aug 29th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Alaska Fun Facts Part IV
When John McCain started his 2008 presidential campaign Sarah Palin was not yet governor of Alaska.
57 Responses to “Alaska Fun Facts Part IV”
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August 29th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Because she’s a fundamentalist right winger, this will only seem like a great appealing status to right wing populist conservatives as a complete, still small-town Washington outsider.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
That’s awesome. It’s going to be hard for Obama to not accuse McCain of not selecting her for purely political reasons.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
This selection has such a Dan Quayle-esque feel to it. I have a feeling we are going to really enjoy the Biden-Palin debates. Maybe Palin is an undiscovered political genius, but I suspect we are about to watch a cringe-inducing public meltdown of a political lightweight of simply epic proportions.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Have you already mentioned that John McCain is older than the state of Alaska?
August 29th, 2008 at 9:41 pm
Other Alaska fun fact: Back during the last major ice age, John McCain used to walk across the Bering land bridge so that one day he could stand upon the future home of Russia, with whom he aspired one day to go to war.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Have any of you checked out Andrew Sullivan tonight? He’s absolutely skewering McCain and Palin.
Good times.
August 29th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
This is obviously a reckless and insane decision on the merits. But strategically, doesn’t this pick make the campaign too much about McCain for McCain’s own good? Picking someone old like Ridge or someone bland like Pawlenty wouldn’t interrupt the McCain narrative at all. Figuring out where Palin stands will require analysis of where she stands with respect to McCain, and that will lead to reconsideration of McCain’s positions, which is exactly what McCain doesn’t need.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
If this election about judgment, the choice of Sarah Pahin shows poor judgment on McCain’s part.
Any intelligent person knows when you choose to have a baby at 43 you have a very high probability of having a child with Downs Syndrome. She used poor judgment not using birth control. Would she use better judgment dealing with our economy? Would she use better judgment dealing with our enemies?
I for one am not willing to take a chance.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
How many of you have had a four month old infant?
She also has four other children!
I know when I had two children and had my third I did not have the energy to put on my makeup, let enough lead a nation.
Where was McCains brain ?!?!?
August 29th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
What a slap in the face!
Mitt Romney and Pawlenty must be piss*d! After all the fuss about Obama not choosing the second place person. McCain does not choose any of the Republican top three. I guess his ego could not take having what the other candidates said about him in the press come back to hit him in the as*.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Sarah Pahin’s husband works for BP “British Petroleum”.
Chaney/Pahlin what’s the difference?
August 29th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
To Mom of 3: you’re assuming she takes care of her own kids. I assume a nanny or two & lots of aides changing diapers ‘because they like it.’
August 29th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
McCain’s treatment of his first wife hasn’t received much press (yet) Stateside, but if it becomes a story, choosing a woman as his running mate might mitigate the impact.
See here and here for Carol McCain’s story.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:16 pm
Monica Goodling wasn’t available evidently. I’m sure many voters will love this I’m just a girl VP choice.
The most dangerous aspect for McCain in this is that she isn’t a politician. She doesn’t know how to edit her words. Everything she says is likely to be a gaff on some level and soon enough we will be hearing her defense. “I’m just a girl”.
While many will be appalled at the possibility of her becoming president if she is half the Christianist some say she is then the thought of her becoming president is likely to be filling the daydreams of millions with feelings of rapture.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
This is like a reliquary of BHO talking points; congratulations to MattY for finding his level.
Meanwhile, perhaps MattY would be good enough to ask someone who’s able to figure things out why it’s incorrect to make the claims he did in this post:
yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/08/palin_global_warming_not_man_made.php
Hint: reach outside your cocoon and find people who are actually familiar with figuring things out.
August 29th, 2008 at 10:48 pm
Dude, it is obviously the dork vote. Is a Tig / Roslin ticket.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:04 pm
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2351/1903451448_635a36aed2_o.jpg
obviously Ms. Palin has talents we have yet to see.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:05 pm
Serious question: is Palin’s husband nonwhite, being one-eighth Alaskan Native? That’s not a high percentage, but if he were one-eighth (or one-sixteen or even one-thirty-second) black he would be considered fully African-American. I don’t get the impression that hypodescent, popularly known as the “one drop rule,” applies as vigorously with non-black minority ancestries, but one-eighth might be enough in this case.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
I wouldn’t rip on her credentials too much. It took her less than 18 months to get involved in an abuse of power scandal. She clearly learns how to be a good Republican very fast.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
He might be considered fully African-American. There’s plenty of “white” people in the US with African ancestry. The one drop rule has always been more theoretical than actual.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
Don’t you guys think that Pat Buchanan piping up to volunteer that Palin was a “brigader” for him in 1996 sort of ruins McCain’s chances with the Jewish community? Do you think it has the potential to be a fatal blow?
August 29th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
dB: “This is obviously a reckless and insane decision on the merits. But strategically, doesn’t this pick make the campaign too much about McCain for McCain’s own good? Picking someone old like Ridge or someone bland like Pawlenty wouldn’t interrupt the McCain narrative at all. Figuring out where Palin stands will require analysis of where she stands with respect to McCain, and that will lead to reconsideration of McCain’s positions, which is exactly what McCain doesn’t need.”
Let’s analyze this in detail.
“This is obviously a reckless and insane decision on the merits.”
Well, that sums up John McCain in a nutshell, doesn’t it? What part of being willing to start wars with Iran, China and Russia didn’t you understand?
“But strategically, doesn’t this pick make the campaign too much about McCain for McCain’s own good?”
The entire McCain campaign is about McCain and nothing but McCain. What part of constantly repeating “I’m a POW war hero” didn’t you understand?
“Picking someone old like Ridge or someone bland like Pawlenty wouldn’t interrupt the McCain narrative at all.”
True.
“Figuring out where Palin stands will require analysis of where she stands with respect to McCain, and that will lead to reconsideration of McCain’s positions, which is exactly what McCain doesn’t need.”
You make two mistakes here. First, nobody in the MSM is going to do any “analysis” because they don’t DO “analysis” where McCain is concerned. They have been told NOT to do that by their owners and that’s what is going down. So there won’t be any “reconsideration of McCain’s positions” – even if Palin doesn’t agree with ANY of them. It will be glossed over just like everything else stupid about McCain and his campaign has been glossed over. He’s a “war hero” – end of story.
Second, it’s irrelevant where she stands on any issue vis-a-vis McCain, as we’ve already established with Matt’s useless post on her attitude toward global warming. She’s not there to be an “issues” person. She’s there to be a “personality” that can attract voters for various reasons (female, creationist, whatever), none of which are related to actual issues.
This is not an election being run on issues. It’s being run on “war hero” vs “uppity black guy”. Period.
And that’s why Obama is going to lose even if McCain rapes Palin on the Wolf Blitzer show. Blitzer would make excuses and the rest of the MSM would ignore the incident, while criticizing anything Obama said about it.
The only question is whether the American electorate is SO fucking stupid as to go along with this process this year. And based on 2004, I’d have to say, “Yes, they ARE.” And the fact that Obama is not widening his lead on McCain – at least according to the same MSM – pretty well supports that supposition.
August 29th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Peter: Democratic Party DNA experts are combing through his genetic makeup as we speak. “Certain pictures” have been located through a “source” which clearly show the pattern of bumps on his head; Democratic Party ethnographical experts are frantically examining them right now in order to determine exactly whether he’s a disenfranchised minority or an Oppressor, as we speak.
As usual, stay tuned to whatever blog MattY is at for the latest.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:13 am
I have a feeling we are going to really enjoy the Biden-Palin debates.
I don’t. There’s going to be a wailing chorus of faux wingnut outrage over something Biden says — precisely what will be decided on the night — to rival the faux outrage against John Kerry for mentioning that Professional Lesbian Mary Cheney was a lesbian. Biden has to be careful. Obama’s been watching the DVD set of Mad Men, and he may want to lend his copy to Biden, with ‘DO NOT WANT’ written on the cover.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Oh, and on the subject of the frozen north, looks like there’ll be a Canadian election called, campaigned and completed by the time Americans go to the polls. Is that within the 501(c)(4) limitations?
August 30th, 2008 at 12:45 am
Here’s Hillary on Palin. Needless to say, I think her too-diplomatic response is totally wrong. Palin isn’t much of anything for women (or anyone else) to be happy about, because she’s just a henchman for the conservatives to work against women’s interests and the interests of other under-protected groups in our country. People like Palin help make the conservatives even more dangerous than if the public face of conservative politics consisted of white men alone, because people like Palin help fool people into thinking that conservative policies help women. So not only is Palin a particularly dangerous addition, she’s also a particularly obnoxious traitor (because the work she’s doing as his VP pick is to help the conservatives secure a whole bunch of political power all-at-once).
I for one am pretty sick of people having mixed feelings about things like highly visible conservative women and highly visible conservative racial minorities. Sarah Palin, Condaleeza Rice and the like are just enemies, at least almost-as-much as guys like McCain are our enemies. The only sense in which they’re less culpable than McCain is by way of the possibility that a person like McCain may have a better idea of what conservatism is really all about, but (for instance) a black conservative TV news-magazine personality may be fooled into believing a lot of the lies he’s been hired by McCain’s ilk to tell.
It’s pretty easy to figure out: If an ignorant woman sees another woman running as a conservative politician, she may conclude, “She’s a woman, like me. We have the same interests that all women do. She must know more than I do about governing, because she’s actually a politician, so if she thinks conservatives’ politics are ok, I suppose they’ve got to be ok. At least, I think she looks honest.” That’s how conservatives manipulate people. They know that populism isn’t their strong suit, so they try to disguise themselves as in some way populist. They used to try to publicly live up to their belief that only men should lead and work. But it became too unpopular idea, so they’ve got to disguise it a little– and people like Palin help a lot. If it wasn’t for a few people like her– the Condaleeza Rices– the conservatives would be doing much worse in this country.
Condaleeza Rice used to sleep with conservative, dicky, white jocks when she was in college. The only reason she does what she does is because she knew that a lot of white people looked down on black people, so being black made her feel small and powerless. She then realized that there was someone conservatives (supposedly) disliked more than black people– the Russians or communists. If she could help white people fight their white enemies, she thought, they might like her and value her. So she became a Russia expert so she could stop being a black person. Condoleeza Rice is no role model for any black person or freedom fighter at all– neither is Palin.
For more posts on Palin, check me out here.
August 30th, 2008 at 1:19 am
“There’s going to be a wailing chorus of faux wingnut outrage over something Biden says — precisely what will be decided on the night —”
I think the outrage is already decided: Biden’s a sexist. Which of Biden’s statements leads to this conclusion has yet to be determined, obviously. But they’ll make something fit. If Biden so much as smirks, he’ll be labeled a sexist.
The only thing that can really save Biden is if they ask Palin a question on evolution. That would show just how wacky Palin really is. Which is why they won’t ask it.
August 30th, 2008 at 1:27 am
Am I the only reader who wishes this would please stop? It’s so transparent. Obviously, if Obama were a Republican, no GOP-hack pundits would complain about his lack of experience. They’d call him a fresh face, etc. If Palin were a Dem, no Democrat-aligned pundits would make noise about Alaska being a small & backwards state. So don’t be a partisan hack. You’re better than that. Tell us why Obama is better on the merits. It’s an easy job.
August 30th, 2008 at 1:33 am
As far as I can tell from her public financial statements, Sarah Palin has a net worth of over $10 million. How is this possible for someone with her presumably humble background? Winnings in the commodity markets? Why isn’t the liberal press and punditry investigating the issue?
August 30th, 2008 at 3:59 am
Did they even talk on the phone before the pick? Was she notified the same time all of us were? And, why didn’t I get a text message?! Somehow I feel like McCain decided he had to have a woman running mate and she was top of the list. Never mind notifying the aides. Never mind giving her a chance to meet the campaign staff and allies. Never mind preparing her for her first national interviews with Time and other media. We must scuttle this news cycle now or people will realize that Barack Obama is not only qualified to be President of this great nation, but is one of the best candidates we have ever had, bar none.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:04 am
She is a lifetime member of the NRA, she is anti-choice, she does not believe in evolution, she wants to drill in ANWR, she does not believe that global warming is man made, she campaigned for Buchanan. I don’t know what else you need to know to think this is a poor pick, but those did me in.
August 30th, 2008 at 7:12 am
About the only non conservative thing I’ve seen is she says she regretted the recent Exxon decision by the SC reducing their damages. She couldn’t possibly say anything in favor of it and stay governor, or mayor, so at least she’s learned a few fundamental things about being a politician. Hardly enough to get booted from the conservative tent. In fact she might be the purist conservative this side of Grover Norquist or James Dobson.
On another matter this pretty much kills the ascendant VP idea. If McCain somehow wins she will be politically the weakest VP since the end of WWII. I’m guessing she will be a sort of surrogate first lady and the embodyment of the perfect ordinary citizen. It will be great theater.
August 30th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Palin, recently:
What is your take on global warming and how is it affecting our country?
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.
She’s a deluded nut-job.
August 30th, 2008 at 11:21 am
Not only that, but she flew from Alaska to Texas while nine months pregnant, an inexcusable error in judgment.
August 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am
John McCain’s first executive Decision, Sarah Palin. shows he cares nothing for this Country, is incompetent, and is not ready to lead. With all our economic problems, threats of terrorism, he picks someone with much less executive experience than Barack Obama, who by the way was 10 years in the state senate before being elected to the U.S. Senate (a bio very similar to Lincoln who is considered one of our greatest if not the greatest President we have ever had), and which takes away McCain’s most ardent argument to date that Barack is an empty suit! Is this another Alan Keyes moment when GOP put up Mr. Keyes to run against Barack in Illinois just because he was Black?
In her speech on Friday, they already have Gov. Palin “lying” to the American people that she was always against the Bridge to Nowhere, however recorded information will prove that this is not accurate and that she was for the Bridge to Nowhere, before she was against it!
“According to the Ketchikan Daily News edition on August 8, 2006, this is what Sarah Palin rushed over to tell the voters of Ketchikan during the primary election campaign:
‘People across the nation struggle with the idea of building a bridge because they’ve been under these misperceptions about the bridge and the purpose,’ said Palin, who described the link as the Ketchikan area’s potential for expansion and growth. Palin said Alaska’s congressional delegation worked hard to obtain funding for the bridge as part of a package deal and that she ‘would not stand in the way of the progress toward that bridge.’” AND
according to the Ketchikan Daily News on September 29, 2006 this is what Sarah Palin rushed over to tell the voters of Ketchikan during the general election campaign:
‘Part of my agenda is making sure that Southeast is heard. That your projects are important. That we go to bat for Southeast when we’re up against federal influences that aren’t in the best interest of Southeast.’ She cited the widespread negative attention focused on the Gravina Island crossing project. ‘We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that’s so negative,’ Palin says”
Taken from Blogger AndrewHalcro.com
Not only is Palin less experienced and less qualified than Barack, she seems to lack the intellectual curiosity, or unwillingness, and depth to probe and understand the important and complexing problems/issues knocking at our door today. For example, “What is it exactly that the vice president does all day?” Palin offhandedly asked CNBC anchor Larry Kudlow in July. And when asked about her stance on Iraq by Alaskan Daily Palin answers “I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments”! Does this show someone who is ready for Prime Time! And, was she truly vetted? Sarah/McCain get ready for she is about to come under the “media” microscope!
McCain’s VP pick also shows a disdain for this country because if something were to unfortunately happen to McCain, Sarah Palin would be our next President of the United States. Can you imagine in her that role? This proves two things in my mind, McCain’s lack of love for this country and that he does not have the judgment to lead this country at this most profound time.
Some in the media call it Historic but in reality Is this decision Historic or Hysterical and a mockery to our political system? Some in the media label it a game changer but is it really a roll of the dice? And should a Presidential candidate play Russian roulette with the people’s business? It is telling of McCain’s character and judgment that with all the problems we face here today, he did not have the People’s interest at heart in this V.P. pick but rather a desire to win for winnings sake and did not think of the consequences of his actions or maybe did not care what it would mean for this country if she were to be sworn in as President of the United States! And, ironically, the very things he accused Barack of being (which he is not) — empty suit, no experience — he got in his own V.P. Pick, Sarah Palin!
In McCain’s/GOP’s calculated ploy to pull Hillary women from Barack without consideration as to whether or not this woman has the ability and experience to lead the United States here and on a world scale shows a lack of sound judgment and it also shows that McCain is NOT READY TO LEAD in the 21st Centruy and is not serious about solving the monumental problems which must be faced — problems which need serious thinking and not strategic games.
McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin, a woman with very little executive experience, a woman who has approved a 26 billion dollar oil pipeline to a Canadian business instead of a business here in the United States, a woman who the Alaskan legislature approved a $100,000 investigation into her motivations in firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, on the allegations that Monegan’s firing was the result of his refusal to fire Mike Wooten, a trooper who is Palin’s former brother-in-law.” has proven to the world how really pathetic the Republican party has become that they will try any trick in the book to keep the power in the hands of big oil and special interest and out of the hands of the people where it belongs.
August 30th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Note that Palin’s husband has a beard. The number one rule in modern presidential politics is that men who are on the ticket or even connected to the top of the ticket cannot have beards. It is just not done. He better shave that rag off quick.
August 30th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Alaska Fun fact V
Population of Wasilla, AK: 8471
Population of Alaska: 683,000
Average Illinois state senate district: 218,000
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