In the mail this morning was an advanced copy of Dan Balz and Haynes Johnson's extremely well-reported history of the 2008 presidential campaign: The Battle for America is what the two veteran Posties have called it. The book will be published on August 4; Balz and Johnson will talk about it on Meet the Press on August 2. There are plenty of scoops, and I can't resisting sharing just one involving a critical phase of the campaign in early October of 2008.
Whose idea was it for Gov. Sarah Palin to attack Barack Obama as a guy who "pals around with terrorists?" Palin's camp has always insisted that the McCain high command endorsed the stratagem, while folks close to McCain have accused Palin of going "rogue" and pointed to the "pals around" attack as an example of how Palin simply could not be controlled. The idea that Palin was hard to manage as a candidate and ignored the advice and wishes of McCain's senior advisers is explicated in some detail by Todd Purdum.
"Our opponent ... is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. This is not a man who sees America as you see America and as I see America."Schmidt has never denied ordering this attack, although others in the campaign told me at the time that Palin had instigated it. At a post-campaign discussion I attended a few months ago, Schmidt said that he regrets two attacks: an ad linking Obama with an Illinois sex-ed program and the decision to go after Obama's friendship with Ayers. (Obama's campaign aides, in turn, told Schmidt that they regretted running an ad implying that McCain was too old (or out of touch) to use the Internet.)
Incompetence in action!
1. The Illinois sex-ed ad - the one Schmidt regrets - was largely true.
2. The Ayers article from Scott Shane of the New York Times was designed to cover for Obama by minimizing his relationship with Ayers. The McCain campaign and not Palin came up with "pal around" and called that "precision", when all it did was let others - like CNN - point to the NYT article as an example of them not palling around. What they should have said is that they had a series of past links, and there's more that the NYT isn't telling. Instead, they played right into the MSM's hands.
actually, the Illinois sex-ed ad - the one Schmidt regrets was largely untrue. But maybe FactCheck.org is just being partisan...
You might want to read my first link and the FC page closely. FC doesn't dispute the core part of McCain's ad, and they also confuse what BHO supposedly supports with what was in the bill he voted for.
Regarding FC being partisan, in the past they've lied, misled, and shown a great deal of bias. For an example of the latter, see this slab of Beltway establishment lies: factcheck.org/elections-2008/wrong_paul.html
For instance, compare what they say about "myths" to Obama's own statements here.
And, FactCheck is lying about this issue. (That link is also an IQ/integrity check, and that's not good news for BHO fans).
Also:
1. They criticized Newt's discussion of a bill, but they did so using a different version of the bill with different language. Some fact-checking, eh? That was from the same person who wrote the sex-ed "debunking" working with Brooks Jackson, their leader.
2. They also covered up the Obama/"Chicago way" connection.
If you want misleading Beltway establishment spin, FactCheck is definitely the place.
The problem with being consistently wrong or dishonest is that your word loses meaning. Then when you try to persuade people with meaningless words, all that's left is ridicule and scorn. There's a reason the GOP is shriveling up around it's Palins, Limbaughs, Newts, Cheneys, and Steeles. Not that it's their fault -- they're just going with the flow.
To say it "was largely true" means it was false. To quote an old Yiddish saying, "A half-truth is all lie".
Don't impune the Yiddish for your poor reading skills. He didn't say that it was only true or identify any components that were either completely false or half-truths, so please read more closely.
If you are really that simplistic and black-and-white, then please provide an example of what political writing would not be false under your definition. There is much (Limbaugh, O'Reilly, etc.) that is only sprinkled with small portions of truth. How would you then distinguish the two?
McCains aides are traitors to the Republican cause. Anyone working for a politician and bitching like that should be named and unemployable except perhaps as a lavatory cleaner. Sorry to the cleaners because I expect most of you are decent hard working honest types with personal integrity. But you would then do a much better job in promoting the next Republicans for the presidency than the bunch of reprobates that McCain had. All you have to do is learn the entire list of American papers and make damn sure the next VP lists ALL of them in alphabetical order and reverse alphabetical order too for every interview. The public will be more than satisisfied, so it seems.
Want to know why politics in America are so lousy? First of all it is the journalists who just write about nonsense and bitch, without even giving the information you are reading the paper for in the first place and secondly it is the faux aides who are really working to sabotage what they are meant to be promoting. Let us dig up the dirt on the aides and NAME THEM and beat the journalists over their heads for their lack of decency and public service. Metaphorically I mean but really they should be given a VERY tough time by the public 'til they move out and decency moves in. I suggest that the traitorous aides should be started on right away by a rare good journalist and the public give a tough time to papers about un named aide stories and shown they are not going to hold sway with them. Were the aides named Donald duck and Mickey Mouse?
We want names not anonymous, bitching reporting on a poor victim who is not anonymous. SHAME!
A decent press would have prevented the war in Iraq which I did NOT ever support being well informed enough to know there was no evidence of WMD. Bush was suppported by almost the whole of America re the war so it was not him alone. He is a really good person who was misguided as regards the war BUT he has done so much to stop the carnage of babies that he has redeemed himself on my scales.
News and truth ae not a fashion, there are classical attributes of quality and decency which should not be changed. Do you think paedophiles and serial killers are the only villains because I can see the reprobates in society are thick among the journalists like an untended plot covered in brambles.
The public has a right to quality journalism to help them to be well- informed and I demand it!
He explained that one need not use the words "explicated" or "utilize".
Marc, considering Obama's affinity for Hugo Chavez (common friend of Ayers) and others over the Honduras, it would appear Sarah Palin was prospective as well.
Not only was she not rogue, she was right. Here is a notice of an event, organized by Michelle Obama at U of Chicago, with the main speakers being Barack Obama and William Ayers.
http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/971106/justice.shtml
How can anyone be so gullible to fall for anything Palin or McCain said? It was all just so much bull. The public are much smarter than the MSM. They didn't care about Ayers and especially didn't care for the 'pallin' around'hype. Good thing for America that these two couldn't get any traction with the man or woman on the street. It seems only those with a half a foot in a bomb shelter got suckered by the straight talkin' express.
The true complete story of Obama and Ayers
Obama was a young lawyer, engaged to Michelle. He did not know Ayers.
The conservative Annenberg Foundation wanted someone to head its new education program in Chicago. They consulted Patricia Albjorg Graham- the most respected educstion consultant in the country. She was than president of the Spencer Foundation, the biggest education foundation in the country, based in Chicago. She had been dean of the Harvard School of Higher Education, President of the Radcliffe School, the holder of 2 name chairs at Harvard, and now a member of the board of the Apache Corporation and head of its Ethics Committee.Soomeone recommended Obama to her- and shehad dinner with him. She was so impressed with him that they talked till the restaurant closed. He said he would take the job if she agreed to be vice president and she agreed. She introduced Ayers to him, as a professor of education at the U of C. That is how Obama got to know Ayers, but they were just acquaintances, never friends.
Google or bing Patricia Albjerg Graham and you will see that she is a remarkable and accomplished woman, used to making important decisions about people.She even counselled Michelle.She know Ayers when they were both graduate students at Columbia Teachers College.
If you have any questions , please ask. But the idea that Obama and Ayers were engaged in some sort of radical conspiracy is ludicrous.
Fact Check. Obama met Ayers through Christine Ayers who worked at the same law firm as Obama. Even so, I doubt Ayers had much impact on Obama, compared to Obama, Ayers could almost be considered conservative.
The question we may want to ask is "what is it about Barack Obama that make people like Ayers want to further his political career?"
In his book he states that he answered an ad looking for a community organizers. He states that he did not know exactly what that was, but thought he could learn on his feet. He needed a job badly, he wasn;t yet enrolled at Harvard and he did not know Michelle yet. The person he spoke with on the phone was Bill Ayers. This is the story that Obama tells in his own book. He just does not mention Ayers name. He met Michelle after Harvard, she was going to be his supervisor. They tell us that on a news show during the campaign. Seems to me thaT IT IS YOU WHO IS TRYING to put out the misinformation. If you would just read his own books and listen closer to his interviews, you'll see the connections. American schools have really been lax in thier reading comphension instruction because so many of you can not even follow a plot. Its really sad. If you want to learn something about a person, you don't stop at the surface information, you really have to dig. This information I just gave you was sealed away in two sentences in a 400 page book.
Sarah Palin pals around with satanists, with secessionists, with surreal narcissistic seals, and with syntactically deprived sillies. May God please make her the Repub candidate in 2011, so that she can pick Ensign or Sanford or Audra Shay as her running mate. What a carnivalesque Mardi Gras! What a wonderful potpourri of Republican meltdowns! And now another US Senator, a Republican (of course) spent the evening with his hand on the inner thigh of David Brooks! Wonderful! Goodbye, Republican party, into the dustbin of history.
I say peecaboo to you with a lead filled snow shoe!!! Someone should say peecaboo to Nancy, Barney and Harry for waisting my money like they are!!!
If that's what you want, you need to build a credible opposition party. Outside of her own personality cult, no one finds Palin anything other than comical. A Palin supporter above claimed that "liberals" or "The MSM" or "ZOG" or whoever would only take her seriously Palin if she could memorize and name every major newspaper in the country. What was expected of her was simply to answer truthfully and easy question.
Why not pair up Dan Quayle in a dress with Jindal - both have no idea what they're talking about when it comes to science or the economy...
It was a mean McCain campaign, and the messenger lady was even meaner.
I just wonder if being in a room with some terrorist is palling around terrorists, then we can call McCain a Communist. He was living with Communists for five years, and enjoyed the hospitality offered by the Communists.
The lady is greedy. She milked Alaska treasury to the fullest, and had no shame in getting those expensive clothing from RNC funds. A self respecting person will never do such things.
She wants to run the country, but just can't run her own house. She allowed her teenaged daughter to get pregnant in her own house.
Now she has resigned to take advantage of her fame to make a million.
I think the one criticism of Palin that bothers me the most is the comment about her "allowing" her daughter to get pregnant. It is a criticism of every mother who ever had a teenaged daughter who got pregnant. In 1983, I was the teenage daughter, and I can tell you that my mother never "allowed" me to get pregnant. She didn't do anything wrong...I did. She was a good mother and taught me what was right and what was wrong, but I (like many other teens) didn't listen.
Hilarious, Saibal. Really funny. I wonder if you'd also like to joke about the detainees who were waterboarded "enjoying the hospitality" of Gitmo?
The question we may want to ask is "what is about Barack Obama that make people like Ayers want to further his political career?"
How would Palin's comment been received (or even be necessary) if the MSM had not abdicated their "check and balance" responsibility and published a bio of Obama? The following is based on over 300 references at http://colony14.net/id41.html
Obama is the grandson of socialists and son of Marxist atheists. From age 10 to 18 he was mentored by Frank Davis, a member of the Communist Party USA, who indoctrinated him in Socialism. At Occidental College, Obama’s best friends included Marxist professors. At Columbia University (Communist/Marxist) he attended socialist conferences for “inspiration.” In Chicago he befriended black militants, leftists, socialists, Marxists, and mobsters and worked as a community organizer for various organizations funded through the Marxist and radical agitator Saul Alinsky with Annenberg Foundation funds. In his book “The Audacity of Hope”, Obama deplores free enterprise capitalism and expresses a desire to roll back the “ownership society.”
Did Drudge link here, or what? If Republicans think anyone still cares about William Ayres, it is no surprise they want Palin to run in 2012. Ha ha!
Look, Obama DOES pal around with terrorists, extremists, Muslims, and anyone else who serves his purpose. He is Bones without Flesh, A man without Ideas and a chameleon. He has no higher purpose...He is equal only to the lowest common denominator. Sarah Palin on the other hand is genuinely quirky, honest, real...Go Sarah!
Thanks for the heads up on The Battle for America. Am looking forward to reading it.
I've met most of the comments with alarm, concern and disdain. I am uncomfortable when people begin bashing the media and blaming it for all the ills in the world. The Iraq War, no less. If we didn't have a free press, we would have one run by the state. You'd really have something to bitch about in that case.
I think voters have a responsibility to become informed before deciding who they're going to support and vote for. Listening to political ads and campaign speeches doesn't cut it. Voters have to do their homework by reading newspapers and listening to the TV news. More importantly they have to read the columns, usually more thought provoking, and watch the interviews and panel discussions on TV. Certainly, they shouldn't take it for granted that everything they hear is the truth.
To go the extra mile they should go to places such as factcheck.org. Despite what some might think, this is an unbiased, nonpartisan fact checking nonprofit set up by a former newspaper publisher who happened to be a Republican. Had voters had the desire for facts, they would have learned early on that the accusations about Obama's alleged friendship were patently untrue.
Even if they were, guilt by association is a tactic used by Joe McCarthy, Hitler and every other demagogue in the world.
McCain's loss was due not to his being a maverick but to being a shoot from the hip kind of guy. He was even cited by his peers for poor judgement in his role in the Keating 5 scandal. He is a political opportunist who selected a woman of little substance after only meeting her briefly at a conference and again at an "interview" at his Arizona ranch which lasted but a few hours.
His calous disregard for the responsibilities of the offices of president and vice president cost him the election. His selection of a woman so ignorant of national and international affairs cost him dearly. There are so many Republican women with brains and competency he could have chosen. As it is, he insulted most thinking women in the country by selecting such a ditz.
There's a large segment of the population out there right now that frightens me.
They are angry at everything, yet understand almost nothing. Thus they are incredibly easy to manipulate.
These same people watched 8 years of deficit spending and a false war, a greedy Wall Street, a hopelessly outmoded auto industry, and companies extending loans or credit cards to anything with a pulse, and scarcely uttered a peep.
Now they take to the streets with nonsense like tea parties.
Radical commentators fan the flames of this rage. They offer no solutions, only blame. Palin was among them, and that's the chief reason she is unqualified to lead this country.
That her hateful remarks were apparently scripted by someone else doesn't fully remove her responsibility for making them.
I like to believe John McCain was conflicted about some of the dirty tricks his staff espoused, and maybe that was the source of some internal clashes. But perhaps I am naive.