Nicolle Wallace, former senior adviser to the McCain presidential campaign, did little to defend Sarah Palin at a panel discussion for Washington Post reporter Anne Kornblut's new book "Notes from the Cracked Ceiling" on Tuesday night. Asked if the team was "ready for anything" when they selected Palin as their nominee, Wallace replied, "We were never ready ... no one was prepared to defend her. Nobody knew anything."
[snip]
Wallace did praise Todd Palin, the former governor's husband and the so-called "first dude." Todd Palin was an "extraordinary spouse," Wallace said, adding that he will be a "great model for what the first husband will look like."
With a comment like that, she should be banished to work with Glenn Beck, since she already has the experience of trying to sell a completely empty, ridiculously unprepared, and totally idiotic candidate like The Wasilla Whiz Kid.
Not to mention, that it's past time for all the Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain, and Mommy Moose, enablers to drop the "Claude Raines - I'm Shocked, Shocked To Find Gambling Going On Here", when it comes to the profound incompetence of the Dead Campaign Express. Help Me Mister Wizard!
To those intrepid ones who went across the seas to be the eyes and ears of America ....To those forthright ones who saw the early clouds of war while many of us at home were seeing rainbows ....To those clear-headed ones who now stand like recording angels among the dead and dying ... To the Foreign Correspondents - this motion picture is dedicated ....
Jesus, who over at this "Pajamas Are Us" outlet thought up this earth-shattering idea?
To stay in JTP mode, was it Izzy, the Idea Idiot? ...
Are the Flying Monkeys so stressed out, that, with the worldwide coverage of Israel's bombardment of Gaza isn't capturing the essence of the story, they have to scrape the bottom-of-the-barrel and pull out this fame-seeking fool?
Couldn't they get The Wasilla Whiz Kid, Sarah Palin, to, I don't know, stand on a chair, and look beyond Russia, to see if she could focus in on Gaza and phone in some reports?
"I get to go over there and let their "Average Joes" share their story, what they think, how they feel -- especially with, you know, world opinion. Maybe get a real story out there."
There you go ...Professionals, with long careers, covering numerous wars and conflicts, they aren't able to get the "real story".
With the long, twisted history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, covering decades, it comes down to this alleged plumber from Ohio to jaunt over there and dig out the "real story".
That's right, the failed McCain-Palin campaign is having a fire sale this week on leftover equipment. Everything is on sale at reduced prices. An email sent over the weekend to all campaign staff, which was subsequently forwarded to the Sleuth, reads:
"Starting Monday December 8, 2008 the prices will be slashed to 36% of the original price for furniture, office supplies, blackberries, and many campaign computers. This is a great opportunity to own a piece of history, finish your Christmas shopping, or simply replace your old laptop."
Don't have any cash on you? No worries. An attached price sheet says, "We accept cash, checks, and credit cards."
Okay ... Dump some of the stuff, pick-up a few bucks, maybe, some folks could have gotten a good deal.
MyFoxDC.com: When we charged them up in the newsroom, we found one of the $20 Blackberry phones contained more than 50 phone numbers for people connected with the McCain-Palin campaign, as well as hundreds of emails from early September until a few days after election night.
We traced the Blackberry back to a staffer who worked for “Citizens for McCain,” a group of democrats who threw their support behind the Republican nominee. The emails contain an insider’s look at how grassroots operations work, full of scheduling questions and rallying cries for support.
But most of the numbers were private cell phones for campaign leaders, politicians, lobbyists and journalists.
We called some of the numbers.
“Somebody made a mistake,” one owner told us. “People’s numbers and addresses were supposed to be erased.”
“They should have wiped that stuff out,” another said. But he added, “Given the way the campaign was run, this is not a surprise.”
We called the McCain-Palin campaign, who says, “it was an unfortunate staff error and procedures are being put in place to ensure all information is secure.”
Even if he didn't blow it on the economy, or do the blindfolded "Pin-The-Tail-On-My-VP-Choice" of The Wasilla Whiz Kid, it still would be hard to imagine that he would ever get elected President.
Well, after submitting myself to a proverbial "My Sister/My Daughter" today, mapping out a handful of posts, I decided to file them, and take the day off, catching up on some much-need rest.
Not to leave you totally dry, we will point to an excellent Frank Rich today, and leave you with a snapping musical interlude.
Dawn also brought the realization that we were at last emerging from an abusive relationship with our country’s 21st-century leaders. The festive scenes of liberation that Dick Cheney had once imagined for Iraq were finally taking place — in cities all over America.
So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.
The same commentators who dismissed every conceivable American demographic as racist, lazy or both got Sarah Palin wrong too. When she made her debut in St. Paul, the punditocracy was nearly uniform in declaring her selection a brilliant coup. There hadn’t been so much instant over-the-top praise by the press for a cynical political stunt since President Bush “landed” a jet on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in that short-lived triumph “Mission Accomplished.”
Sorry Garlic Fans, that this is a late post today - and my only for the day.
As has happened in the past, jammed up on the homefront, and the dial is bouncing between "very tired" and "exhausted".
It's been a rough past few days ... A comedy of errors on Wednesday, attempting to get a blood sample taken from my soon-to-be-96-year-old Aunt, getting it in time for our regular check-up visit today (She's A-Okay! ... Passed with flying colors, gained a little weight, all is well; I did, though, discuss with the doc the uptick in her dementia and now I am armed with some meds that can tamp down and mellow her out, when-and-if, she gets too agitated, as has happened a few times).
So, that left me out of the loop for most of the day today.
I did feel the ground moving, and the cable television heads all-a-flutter, due to Obama, and HIS FIRST PRESS CONFERENCE AS PRESIDENT-ELECT!
I suspect, we'll be hearing a lot more "Firsts" leading up to January 20th.
And I did catch some of the on-going, landfill-sized dirt bombs the Dead Campaign Express is been attempting to bury Mommy Moose with ...
Interesting, after being spat upon by the Flying Monkeys, for daring to point out The Wasilla Whiz Kid and a doorknob are about par on the smarts, now, the people that picked her(McKKKain, going to the gates of the Arctic Circle), coached her, defended her, exploited her, clothed her, are the ones opening up the Alaskan-sized closet.
I think it's supposed to be, in the final days of campaign, that you "get out the vote", not, as it appears the Dead Campaign Express is employing, "get the voter the hell out of here".
Audience members escorted out of Sen. John McCain’s, R-Ariz., campaign event in Cedar Falls questioned why they were asked to leave Sunday’s rally even though they were not protesting.
Lara Elborno, a student at the University of Iowa, said she was approached by a police officer and a McCain staffer and was told she had to leave or she would be arrested for trespassing.
“It was a very confusing, very frustrating situation,” Elborno said. “I said that I had a right to be there, I wasn’t doing anything disruptive — I was sitting, waiting for the rally to start.”
She said McCain staffers wouldn’t tell her why she was being asked to leave and when she got outside, she saw “a group of about 20 people” who had all been asked to leave.
Despite repeated attempts, McCain’s campaign could not be reached for comment.
Kicking people out of your own rally?
I'm not sure that's in too many campaign playbooks.
But, those were just regular people, Joe-and-Josephine Six-Packs.
A McCain-Palin campaign official snubbed the president of Penn State University who inquired about attending a campus speech Tuesday by Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, university officials told ABCNews.com.
"I welcome eminent visitors to our campus everyday, including lots of Republicans, but [the McCain-Palin campaign] didn't want me to greet her or even attend the event," said Spanier.
Some might say that makes it an odd time to snub the president of the state's largest university. The school enrolls 40,000 students and counts a quarter-million alumni living in Pennsylvania alone.
Spanier says he does not appear on stage or introduce candidates but is always eager "to officially welcome visitors to our campus."
"At a time when both campaigns are appealing to independents and people of the other party in our state, it seems like a strange decision," Spanier said.
I would suspect, that in leaving, the Palin Mob stomped and kicked the Nittany Lion mascot, as, probably, it is also a "Big Democrat".
And just think, The Wasilla Whiz Kid could have added another name to her roll call, like "Tito the Builder" and "Nancy the Nurse", she could have given a shout out to "Graham, the College President".
What's pissing off a potential quarter-million voters?
Where have you gone, Joe the faux Plumber, Our Campaign turns it's lonely eyes to you. What's that you say, John, the Maverick Man. Revoltin' Joe has left and gone away, Yea, Yea, Yea, Yea, Yea, Yea!
Update - McCain staffers tell ABC News that it was "a simple mix up" and Joe "will join the campaign at a Thursday evening event."
Update - Dana Bash updates:
McCain aides called it a “miscommunication,” but once I got on the bus I called Wurzelbacher myself and asked him what really happened. He told me that he had hoped to come to the morning rally, but that no one from McCain’s campaign ever called him back to confirm, Bigger ooops.
Well, that kind of diamond-drilling precision sure ought'a rope in more votes.
I mean, they just couldn't get enough of that, entertaining themselves, so smug that they were pinning something on Obama that would surely sink his campaign.
It was all kittens-with-a-ball-of-string, those heady, "celebrity" days.
"By the way…shouldn’t we hear from our celebrity Joe, just a second, Joe Wurzelbacher?”
"All right guys, I didn't prepare anything," Wurzelbacher said. "The only thing I've been saying is just get out and get informed. I mean really know what you're talking about when you're talking about it. Don't take everyone's opinions. I came to my own opinions by research. Get involved in the government. That way we can hold our politicians accountable and take back our government.”
"Our celebrity Joe"
Someone needs to check, were these people the model, the inspiration, for the film "Idiocracy"?
The longer this interview goes on, the more Faux News host Megyn Kelly, talking (or we should say, "freaking out") with Bill Burton of the Obama Campaign, melts down. Megyn Kelly Loses It
As noted in the video, the fru-fru tizzy that has Kelly with, proverbially, Loony Tune steam coming out of her ears. is a Matted Sludge/Dead Campaign Express smear-of-the-week, pointing to a YouTube of a radio interview Barack Obama did over seven-years ago.
You click and you link to a YouTube clip titled "Obama Bombshell Redistribution of Wealth Audio Uncovered". The clip consists of some audio - with misleading extracts of text - to a 2001 Chicago public radio interview with a very studious Barack Obama in law professor mode discussing the limitations of the court and his belief that the legislative process is the appropriate way to pursue economic justice. (Which if memory serves - accords with the conservative preference to eliminate judges who legislate from the bench.)
This clip isn't as boring as watching paint dry. It's MORE boring. It's like watching paint PERIOD.
The phrase "Clutching At Straws" does not do justice to this very limp attempt by Drudge to erect something he can put up against Barack Obama. Alas - as Drudge is all too aware - it just won't stand up any more.
Naturally, the Right Wing Freak Show has been in a lather over it, ostensibly, to point fingers at to say the Stumblin' Bumblin' Fly Boy is right, he is a Socialist, with Faux News right there, with their fire-engine-red megaphone.
Now, in fairness, you can almost understand why Megyn Kelly melted down, on camera.
It's the final week of the campaign, and, to be cautious, things aren't looking good for the dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds.
They're getting nervous, jittery, snapping at shadows, not sleeping well, irritable, knowing the party is coming to an end.
Afterall, if the Democrat's ticket wins, they, in all likelihood, won't be getting the daily talking points from an Obama White House, they way they have from the Bush Grindhouse.
But they also may be worried for another reason.
An Obama White House may just knock Faux News off its' perch, to be nothing more than an annoying infomerical.
During his speech at the Al Smith dinner last night, Barack Obama once again mocked Fox News, boosting an effort to destroy the power and influence of the conservative media networks, an effort that I consider to be every bit as significant as the destruction of the modern Republican party. As noted by Kos, this continues a theme for the week where Obama mocked Fox during the debate last night and then again in the upcoming New York Times Magazine in an article by Matt Bai. This is also the continuation of a recent theme for the Obama campaign: Robert Gibbs famously ambushed Sean Hannity after the last debate in Nashville, David Plouffe recently called them the "24-hour ACORN channel" and Bill Burton has been all over their network embarrassing them over and over.
Let's consider the strategy of this for a second, because it is really smart. Obama is laying the foundation of delegitimizing Fox as a respectable news network and openly making the case that Democrats and others in the news media have been afraid for so long to say out loud, that Fox News serves the sole purpose of Republican and right wing propaganda. While this may certainly sound like an obvious point to many of us on the left, it is something that has become a bit of a taboo for people to say out loud to mainstream audiences out of fear. For Democrats, the fear is that Fox will train their sights on them and further alienate them from Fox's core Bubba audience. For the rest of the media, it is a well documented fear of the Fox's heavy handed media relations machine that intimidates other journalists from writing critical stories about the network, leaving the only critical voices about the network to come from the left from filmmakers like Robert Greenwald.
The difference with Obama is that he is not afraid of Fox. Given the platform and opportunity to take them on, he is using it, unlike the Democrats on the past. In addition to the candidate and his campaign openly mocking the network, we know that Obama knows no fear of Fox because consistent with his moral code, he let Murdoch and Ailes know he didn't respect them directly to their face as Micheal Wolffe recounted in Vanity Fair.
Yes he did.
Murdoch was said to be livid that Obama didn't come in and kiss his ring.
After others intervened, Obama did, finally, go to meet Murdoch and Ailes
Then, after he said his piece, Murdoch switched places and let his special guest, Roger Ailes, sit knee to knee with Obama.
Obama lit into Ailes. He said that he didn’t want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome—just short of a terrorist.
Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand.
A tentative truce, which may or may not have vast historical significance, was at that moment agreed upon.
Scroll back up and watch the video again.
It can appear that Bill Burton is having fun, getting Megyn Kelly blustering and blabbering, and watching her melt down.
Leave it to the Dead Campaign Express, to generate more of those "final-week-of-the-campaign" headlines, just about all other campaigns would go out of their way to have spikes rammed into their eyes, rather than be humiliated as such.
Some three dozen workers at a telemarketing call center in Indiana walked off the job rather than read an incendiary McCain campaign script attacking Barack Obama, according to two workers at the center and one of their parents.
Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at the center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."
This worker, too, confirmed sacrificing pay to walk out, saying her supervisor told her: "If you don't wanna phone it you can just go home for the day."
The script coincided with this robo-slime call running in other states, but because robocalling is illegal in Indiana it was being read by call center workers.
Already behind in the polls, with just about every pollster that steps on television, you can see the clothes pins through their shirts, attached to their nipples, to keep them from saying the word "landslide", and that the race is over, he wants to add to the long odds, offending people, forcing them to walk off their jobs, because they think he, and the campaign, is repugnant.
File that brilliant piece of strategy away, for 2012.
Keep in mind, robocalls are illegal in Indiana, forcing the McCain campaign to rely on these call centers to spread their smears. If more states passed similar laws, maybe we'd have more call-center-worker rebellions? And ultimately fewer loathsome Republican attacks over the phone?
Typically, I would quote a passage, or two, for the piece, however, I think it will read better if you just jump on over there and check it out.
Particularly, the second and third "Ashley" referenced, can, succinctly, stand in for the elevator pitch, or Reader's Digest version, for a quick snapshot on the differences between Barack Obama and Stumblin' Bumblin' John McKKKain Go read "The Three Ashleys"
This takes a steady hand, and an enormous amount of dedicated concentration.
For a professional (we use the term loosely) journalist, to ignore the overwhelming, blaring, blanketing news-of-the-day, that has the television talking heads doing somersaults, and all but taping their mouths shut, to keep from saying that the presidential race is all but over, you have to take off your baker's hat and tip it to the Associated Press's Liz Sidoti.
Yesterday, she see's what virtually no one else sees, a kind of "Sixth Sense" thing ...
The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.
The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain's "Joe the plumber" analogy struck a chord.
Pretty amazing, no?
To take an obscure, outlying poll, very narrow as to its subject, when most of all the other reputable ones have a span of 8%-14% lead of Obama, and boast that her favorite donut eater is still in the game, that certainly must be earning her a front seat on the Dead Campaign Express.
Just to refresh you, Ms. Sidoti doesn't just deliver stories to the AP, she also delivers donuts to Stumblin' Bumblin' John McKKKain.
Normally, I wouldn't waste my time or yours with Sidoti's nonsense, but there's an amusing story to tell involving her that's just too good not to share. It goes back to April 14, when both John McCain and Barack Obama appeared at an event for newspaper editors hosted by the AP.
At the event, the head of AP addressed Barack as "Osama" while John McCain was given a box of Dunkin' Donuts -- with sprinkles. And coffee, with a little cream and a little sugar. By none other than Liz Sidoti.
Here's the video, so you can see just how accommodating she was.
Sidoti spent the rest of her article painting as rosy a picture for the debunked Maverick as possible, apparently emulating her hero, like he did in the debate, by shielding her eyes away from Obama, the prevailing - and growing - trends, that has most of the media whispering "landslide".
The only thing missing from the piece was visibly showing the pom-poms.
Way to go Liz!
Maybe, after the campaign, you can get AP to assign you to Arizona, and you can keep delivering the donuts (with sprinkles) to the bitter, angry, defeated Fly Boy.
Al-Qaida supporters suggested in a Web site message this week they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency.
The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaida wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, "impetuous" Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier," the message said. "Then, al-Qaida will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush."
For the Dead Campaign Express, it's starting to pile up ... One bad day, followed by another, and another ...
We had over the weekend, the the avalanche of endorsements for Barack Obama, a "River of Ink", including the one from the Chicago Tribune, which "Just a reminder that when the Chicago Tribune says "This endorsement makes some history for the Chicago Tribune. This is the first time the newspaper has endorsed the Democratic Party's nominee for president." they're talking about the first time in 161 years."
Is it in the water they drink? ... The air quality at the Dead Campaign Express HQ? ... Are they working from a "How-To-Run-A-Presidential-Campaign-for-Dummies"?
I happened to be watching MSNBC when this interview occurred, and it was a jawdropper.
McKKKain flak Nancy Puss'n'Boots actually dismissed Northern Virginia, pointed to the "southern part" as the "real Virginia" and then, when given the opportunity to correct herself, reiterated it!
KEVIN CORKE: Okay. You’re talking about winning this year, but that's going to require that you win states like – well, like Virginia, for example. And as someone who is now in northern Virginia, we're both right here, we get it. Northern Virginia is increasingly strong in the state. They have more political clout. Democrats have won the statehouse; Jim Webb’s surprising victory in the Senate. It would seem to me that there could be a tipping of the balance there. Would you agree with that? And that maybe be – you know, maybe that's where he has to focus his energy now.
NANCY PFOTENHAUER: Well, Kevin, I certainly agree that northern Virginia has gone more Democratic. You know, as a proud resident of Oakton, Virginia, I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from the District of Columbia and moved into northern Virginia. And that's really what you see there. But the rest of the state, real Virginia, if you will, I think will be very responsive to Senator McCain’s message. And remember that, you know, you’ve got places in other states like northern Wisconsin, the iron range of Minnesota, south-central and southeastern Pennsylvania, the St. Louis suburbs and the rural areas of Missouri that are very responsive to our message. And again we're taking it to them in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. He’s having to fight to defend there, as you can tell because he's deployed people like the Clintons out in Pennsylvania. And every speech Joe Biden gives, he says, “I’m from Scranton.” You don't know what else he's going to say, but he sure gets that line in.
CORKE: Hey Nancy, I’m going to give you a chance to climb back off that ledge. Did you say "real Virginia"?
PFOTENHAUER: I did say outside of north – well, I mean real Virginia, because northern Virginia is where I’ve always been, but real Virginia I take to be the – this part of the state that is more southern in nature, if you will. Northern Virginia is really metro D.C., as you're aware, Kevin.
CORKE: All right. I’m just going to let you -- you’re aware of that one. I’m just saying.
My god, how stupid can these McCain people be? First, they call Arlington and Alexandria "communist country." Then, Sarah Palin talks about how only the rural, "small town" (like Wasilla?) parts of America are "pro-America." Now, McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer channels George Allen's "macaca" moment, when among other things he welcomed S.R. Sidarth - a lifelong resident of Fairfax County - to "America and the real world of Virginia."
Hmm. Virginia is a key swing state, with 13 electoral votes, and recent polling showing Obama with a modest lead. The state's two most populous counties -- Fairfax and Prince William Counties -- are both in northern Virginia.
And the McCain campaign keeps insulting them.
If there's a clever angle to this strategy, it's hiding well.
They really must be strivin' for that Rovian Utopia, of a 50.1% - 49.9% mandate.
It's probably a good idea, that on the day you light your own hair on fire, and you happen to be booked on the David Letterman Show, you should follow through with the booking, and drag your charred, sorry-ass onto the stage.
Shortly after announcing he was putting the Dead Campaign Express up on blocks, he ducked out of the Letterman gig, and David Letterman spent virtually the entire program skewering Stumblin' Bumblin' Johnny for it.
Especially so, when it was discovered he wasn't rushing back to Washington, to lend his thimble-sized expertise to the current economy woes, as was the reason he gave for lighting his hair on fire (and, we should add, going against the advice of his financial mentor, Phil Gramm, whined about needing to bag out of the debate tomorrow evening, if Hank's Heist was a done deal by that time).
J. Thomas Duffy created and lauched 'The Garlic in 2005.
Mr. Duffy is an accomplished writer, with experience as a newspaper reporter, radio writer, comedy and stand-up writer, the author of three children's books (unpublished, so far) and, and, through a good number of his writing experience, actually received payment for it.
Mr. Duffy is also a Contributing Editor on the blog, 'The Reaction' and a Contributing Writer to the blog 'The Moderate Voice.
In his spare time, Mr. Duffy likes to promulgate that is actually the dog salivating that caused Pavlov to ring the bell.
