McCain's VP: Gov. Palin is chosen

[pennsyltucky]

charlie rose is about as objective as ive ever seen.

[Longshot]

I will take a a shot at some of this, I am not very political, but a few things really don't add up with this from the very little research I have done.

Originally Posted by J8300

This doesnt even go into that much detail.
Attacks, praise stretch truth at GOP convention


ST. PAUL, Minn. - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.

Some examples:
PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."
THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

First of all this.... You are going to have to google Don Young on this one. From what I have read he is the one bringing home the "bacon" here.

From here http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...%3Den%26sa%3DN

Then there is Republican Don Young who has been Alaska's lone U.S. Representative for 35 years. Young is probably best known outside of Alaska for securing $223 million in federal earmarks for the "Bridge to Nowhere" - a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate which connects Gravina Island (population less than 50) with Ketchikan (population 8,000). Last year Young's campaign spent nearly $850,000 on legal fees, but he also won't explain why.



At the start of the Convention, Palin's Lieutenant Governor Sean Parnell stunned delegates by announcing he would be making an August GOP Primary challenge against Young for the Congressional seat. Parnell, with Governor Palin at his side, then left the Convention floor to file the official paperwork. That move was reportedly very well received by the delegation.

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."
THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

I am not really familiar with how politics work, but I have been under the impression that when someone "co-sponsors" a bill, it seems that they just agree with what the bill states, it does not mean that they helped write the bill. Now if this is the case, than this is just smoke and mirrors, because anyone can say yeah I agree with what you are saying I will co-sponsor, but it does not mean crap about what he actually did. Maybe I am not understanding what really happens but this is how I see it.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."
THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.
Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.
He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

This is just plain CRAP.... How is he helping any of us???? He is going to lower the tax on "poor workers"??? Most poor workers that I know do not pay any tax anyway, they get it back at the end of the year and get more back with the earned income credit?? So tell me what he is really going to change??? Oh yes he is going to tax us more, Every business owner that I know is going to get taxed way more, more employment taxes, more income taxes, how is this good? When he say's wealthy he does not mean millionaires he means the small business owners who are the heart and soul of our economy. To the average Joe, $250K a year seems like a lot, but believe me after you take out your taxes and operating expenses and get taxed on your value of the property and assets you have, than take out the wages you paid and account for the employment taxes that we have to pay... there is not much left, yet he wants more..... Yeah real smart. I don't care who you are taxes are to high, and if you don't believe me, I will be willing to trade our taxes for yours any day. Taxes Must come down and government needs to shrink plain and simple.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.
THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

I still don't see how this makes her less experienced than Obama, this is just trying to tie her in to big oil, and everyone hates big oil company's.. more smoke and mirrors that really do nothing to rebut or give credit to what was said.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.
THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

Who is in charge of the national guard when they are not in Iraq? or deployed? So when these troops are not deployed I would assume that each state has control over them. Again, no one said that she had control over them while they are deployed, but Alaska does have 2 international boarders which they decided was not important enough to mention. Again just smoke and mirrors.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."
THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

I really don't care about this one, I could care less about how many votes either of them got in those respective situations.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."
THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

And the point is?


Just keep in mind, I still don't like McCain and Sarah Palin has intrigued me, but still undecided if its going to get me to vote McCain, But I sure as hell am not going to vote Obama,

[ALS]

She winged the speech. The teleprompter went down 1/2 way through the speech.

BREAKING: Sarah Palin "Winged" Her Speech Because of "Broken" Teleprompter
Posted by: Erick Erickson

Thursday, September 4, 2008 at 01:00AM

Halfway through Sarah Palin's speech tonight at the RNC, people following the speech noticed she was deviating from the prepared text.

According to sources close to the McCain campaign, the teleprompter continued scrolling during applause breaks. As a result, half way through the speech, the speech had scrolled significantly from where Governor Palin was in the speech. The malfunction also occurred during Rudy Giuliani's speech, explaining his significant deviations from his speech.

Unfazed, Governor Palin continued, from memory, to deliver her speech without the teleprompter cued to the appropriate point in her speech.

Contrast this to Barack Obama who, when last his teleprompter malfunctioned, was left stuttering before a crowd unable to advance his speech until the problem was resolved.

Sarah Palin. Winner.

[Longshot]

Originally Posted by pennsyltucky

so your sorry excuse for a nominee voted bush over 80% of the time.... the rest is just BO's partisan socialist politics.

No Obama didn't vote bush 80% of the time, he voted "Present"

[J8300]

Originally Posted by pennsyltucky

insinuating she was for the bridge before the national ridicule...which is not the case.

Everything I have read said she was for the bridge while running for governor, then against it after elected.



Even McCain had problems with her earmarks.

WASILLA, ALASKA -- For much of his long career in Washington, John McCain has been throwing darts at the special spending system known as earmarking, through which powerful members of Congress can deliver federal cash for pet projects back home with little or no public scrutiny. He's even gone so far as to publish "pork lists" detailing these financial favors.

Three times in recent years, McCain's catalogs of "objectionable" spending have included earmarks for this small Alaska town, requested by its mayor at the time -- Sarah Palin.

Now, McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has chosen Palin as his running mate, touting her as a reformer just like him.

McCain has made opposition to pork-barrel spending a central theme of his 2008 campaign. "Earmarking deprives federal agencies of scarce resources, at the whim of individual members of Congress," McCain has said.

But records show that Palin -- first as mayor of Wasilla and recently as governor of Alaska -- was far from shy about pursuing tens of millions in earmarks for her town, her region and her state.

This year, Palin, who has been governor for nearly 22 months, defended earmarking as a vital part of the legislative system. "The federal budget, in its various manifestations, is incredibly important to us, and congressional earmarks are one aspect of this relationship," she wrote in a newspaper column.

In 2001, McCain's list of spending that had been approved without the normal budget scrutiny included a $500,000 earmark for a public transportation project in Wasilla. The Arizona senator targeted $1 million in a 2002 spending bill for an emergency communications center in town -- one that local law enforcement has said is redundant and creates confusion.

McCain also criticized $450,000 set aside for an agricultural processing facility in Wasilla that was requested during Palin's tenure as mayor and cleared Congress soon after she left office in 2002. The funding was provided to help direct locally grown produce to schools, prisons and other government institutions, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan watchdog group.

Wasilla received $11.9 million in earmarks from 2000 to 2003. The results of this spending are very apparent today. (The town also benefited from $15 million in federal funds to promote regional rail transportation.)

The community transit center is a landmark: a one-story, tile-fronted building with a drive-through garage. Its fleet of 10 buses provides service throughout the region. Mat-Su Community Transit Agency officials say the building was made possible with a combination of federal money and matching gifts from a private foundation.

Taylor Griffin, a McCain campaign spokesman, said that when Palin became mayor in 1996, "she faced a system that was broken. Small towns like Wasilla in Alaska depended on earmarks to take care of basic needs. . . . That was something that Gov. Palin was alarmed about and was one of the formative experiences that led her toward the reform-oriented stance that she has taken as her career has progressed."

Palin, he said, was "disgusted" that small towns like hers were dependent on earmarks.

Public records paint a different picture:

Wasilla had received few if any earmarks before Palin became mayor. She actively sought federal funds -- a campaign that began to pay off only after she hired a lobbyist with close ties to Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), who long controlled federal spending as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He made funneling money to Alaska his hallmark.

Steven Silver was a former chief of staff for Stevens. After he was hired, Wasilla obtained funding for several projects in 2002, including an additional $600,000 in transportation funding.

That year, a local water and sewer project received $1.5 million, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, which combs federal spending measures to identify projects inserted by congressional members.

When Palin spoke after McCain introduced her as his running mate at a rally in Ohio last week, she made fun of earmarking. She said she had rejected $223 million in federal funds for a bridge linking Ketchikan to an island with an airport and 50 residents, referring to it by its derogatory label: the "bridge to nowhere."

In the nationally televised speech, she stood by McCain and said, "I've championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress thanks, but no thanks, on that bridge to nowhere. If our state wanted a bridge, I said, we'd build it ourselves."

(my words here: what I read was that they wanted a lot more of the bridge paid for by the fed gov, and when it was obvious alaskans were going to have to pay she changed her mind, but kept the money, YES KEPT THE MONEY)

However, as a candidate for governor in 2006, Palin had backed funding for the bridge. After her election, she killed the much-ridiculed project when it became clear the state had other priorities. She said she would use the federal funds to fill those needs.

This year she submitted to Congress a list of Alaska projects worth $197.8 million, including $2 million to research crab productivity in the Bering Sea and $7.4 million to improve runway lighting at eight Alaska airports. A spokesman said she cut the original list of 54 projects to 31.

"So while Sen. McCain was going after cutting earmarks in Washington," said Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense, "Gov. Palin was going after getting earmarks."

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics...,2482434.story

[625]

Originally Posted by ChamberedRound

Forget Fox, forget CNN, MSNBC, etc. I watched on PBS. Some of the shows there are IMHO the last bastions of objective, responsible journalism and a place where ALL the candidates (even guys like Kucinich and Paul) were given the opportunity and the time to discuss their views.

Yea, I watched it on PBS as well, but not by choice. I don't have cable so this was the only channel that was covering it. I couldn't disagree more about PBS being objective. They are lefties through and through. If you watched the Dem convention on PBS and compare the two, it's obvious that they have an agenda. Yes, they might let some non-mainstream people get air-time, but the camera work and commentary are slanted. Gwen Ifill was orgasmic after the Obama speech. She's poor at acting objective. So is Jim Lehrer. Just go to the PBS website and look at some of the interviews they have with Republicans and see the idiotic questions they ask.

I thought Palin did a great job, far better than the anointed one. Barry stumbled and stammered multiple times. Palin was nearly flawless. Not that this should matter, but everyone keeps saying Barry is so great at giving speeches. He's not bad, but take away the script and tele-prompter and he is a complete idiot. Look at the joke of an appearance he made at Saddleback. The upcoming debates should be interesting.

I thought Romney, Huckabee, and Guiliani all gave good speeches too, especially Huckabee and Guilani.

I still don't like McCain at all, but having Palin as his VP choice will lessen the sting of pulling the lever for him on election day.


Oh, and please don't feed IT, people.

[RocketFoot]

I'll tell you what, after the Palin announcement, I started to think that this country actually has a chance to survive...now, after Palin's speech, there is no doubt that there is significant hope for us as a country! I am highly excited! McCain may not be the best man for the job either, but Palin will keep him in check, plus VPOTUS is a perfect launching pad for Palin in 2012!

[jtkratzer]

Originally Posted by RocketFoot

I'll tell you what, after the Palin announcement, I started to think that this country actually has a chance to survive...now, after Palin's speech, there is no doubt that there is significant hope for us as a country! I am highly excited! McCain may not be the best man for the job either, but Palin will keep him in check, plus VPOTUS is a perfect launching pad for Palin in 2012!

With Michael Steele as her VP!

[ALS]

Originally Posted by Longshot

No Obama didn't vote bush 80% of the time, he voted "Present"

Just proves the man can not make a decision.

[5711-Marine]

Obama and the co-sponsored ethics reform perhaps it's not the example of reaching across the aisle the Obama campaign claims:

The Obama Letter is here

See John McCain's Feb 6th 2006 letter here and here

"I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform were sincere," McCain writes.

Obama attended a meeting with McCain and senators committed to a bipartisan task force on ethics reform. McCain left the meeting convinced that Obama was open to working closely together, according to an aide.

But the next day, Obama wrote McCain that he preferred his own party's legislation to a task force and suggested McCain take another look at the Democratic caucus's Honest Leadership Act, which does not have a Republican cosponsor.

McCain: "When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership's preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter. ... I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in political to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won't make the same mistake again."