BottleOfBlog

Will Someone Please Ask Her The Question

WASHINGTON - Is Sarah Palin going through a catharsis, some sort of political rehabilitation or is she now a permanent fixture on the national political scene?

The former Republican vice presidential hopeful returned home after the election to her job as Alaska governor where she promptly held a news conference and conducted several television interviews. She’s lined up for NBC’s “Today” show Tuesday.

In addition, later this week she will head to sunny Miami to attend the Republican Governors Association annual conference where she will again meet with reporters on Thursday.

 

And this is true.  Since Sarah Palin lost her bid to become Vice President of the United States, she's been on Tee Vee very nearly non-stop. 

And forget all that "what liberal media" stuff about why hasn't any other losing Vice Presidential candidate in the history of television gotten the kind of attention this woman who has higher unfavorability ratings than favorability ratings gotten.

The answer is, quite simply, what you already know:  the major media is hopelessly conservative, much like its corporate owners.

But what I still want to know is why, when she's been on Tee Vee nearly non stop since getting embarrassingly trounced in a national election--not one single reporter--and despite the conservative ownership of nearly every single public and cable television and radio station, and mass market newspaper, we're still told that individual reporters are by and large liberal--has asked Sarah Palin "The Question".

Not one.

As I understand socialism, it involves the state or collective ownership of the means of producing wealth and the distribution of that wealth.

And since Alaskans collectively own the oil wealth of Alaska, and since the state distributes that wealth to Alaskans, and since Sarah Palin campaigned fiercely against socialistic policies, and since a majority of Alaskans voted for her policies...

Now that she is returning to govern Alaska, what exactly is she going to about dismantling the awful wealth destructive policies of America's only socialist state?

It's not a trick question.  It's not an unfair question.  

It's at the heart of her political philosophy.  And fifty eight million Americans voted against socialism in this country, including sixty percent of Alaskans, at her urging.

So, please, ask her.  What is she going to do to put her policies into practice and end the awful socialism in Alaska?

Bah, Or We Interrupt This Election To Talk About Something Really Important

But thanks to a Big Ten conference schedule that scares no one, Penn State is almost a virtual lock to end up 11-0. Meanwhile, the best teams from the best conferences like the SEC and the Big 12 will likely beat each other up and eliminate four or five teams that are probably superior to Penn State, or anyone else from the Big Ten.
 
So even though I can think of no fewer than 10 teams from the SEC, Big 12 or Pac-10 that would be more deserving (Texas Tech, Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, Texas, USC, LSU, Georgia and even Missouri), they will be penalized for being in a far superior conference.
 
But this is how it’s going to play out, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Another Big Ten team will have its name spit out of the computer, and it will be invited to the BCS Championship Game. And barring some hacker’s ability to create a anti-Big Ten virus for the BCS computer, Penn State will go to that national championship game with all sorts of highfalutin’ dreams, but stagger away looking like a carcass that was dipped in beef gravy and tossed into a pit bull’s den.

One, the Big Ten is soft this year. 

Two, I wish they weren't because Penn State has a really good team.  I'd rather see them challenged in a tough Big Ten than go 11-0 in a weak one.

Three, until Penn State wins it's last three games, I'm not about to say they deserve to play for the national championship.

But, if they do, they deserve to play for the national championship.

Do Journalists Hate Journalism?

NEW YORK – John McCain supporters who believe they haven't gotten a fair shake from the media during the Republican's candidacy against Barack Obama have a new study to point to. Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared to 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs…

"For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as a better choice for president than John McCain," said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center. "If you watch the evening news, you'd think you should vote for Obama."

Um, maybe that reason is that Barack Obama actually is a better choice for president than John McCain.

I hate to do it--actually, I don't.  I don't care at all.  So I'm going to.

Why Is There A Second Debate?

Why was there a first debate? Why are they called debates? There's no debating going on.

It's just two uncomfortable guys trying to blandly answer questions without saying anything terribly, terribly wrong.

It's like some kind of super weird date where two guys are having dinner with the same girl's parents for the first time and at the same time.

I don't even know what the point of these things are anymore.

Look At The Democrats Spend! Look At The Democrats Tax!

For the thousandth time:

You can't say it any better than this:

As you can see, there are basically two kinds of situations in which this ratio skyrockets — either World War II breaks out, or else you put representatives of the modern conservative movement in the White House.

Why don't Americans know this?

Shrub In A Dress

Now, many of her responses seemed delivered by rote, and many did not answer the question. And, as you can see on our fact-checking segment, she distorted a few things. She also had a down-home aura that you don’t usually see in this type of setting, which, of course, was part of her point — that she’s not a creature of Washington but of the middle class. Few creatures of Washington wink, drop their “gs” and grin into the camera quite like Ms. Palin.

Maybe not. But I can think of one Washington creature that winks, drops its "gs" and smirks into the camera.

Does anybody except for shithead New York Times writers not, by now, get that letting a folksy, down home, winkin' and grinnin', inexperienced, incurious, Wershington outsider Gubner anywhere near the White House is a fucking nightmare?

Conservative Republicans Save Americans From Nine Trillion Dollars Of Taxpayer Savings Threatened By Tax And Spend Democrats

As of Sept 30th, the debt was $10,024,724,896,912.49.

Ten trillion dollars. And growing. Under eight years of fiscally conservative leadership in Washington. It's shocking.

But not nearly as shocking as what might have been!

Let me take you back. Back to a time when out of control tax and spend liberals ran the government!

And Here's What You Won!

BAGHDAD — It's a damning indication of how poorly things have gone for the United States during its five-year misadventure in Iraq that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can drive in broad daylight though this war-ravaged city and spend the night at the presidential palace, but George W. Bush can't._

Mr. Ahmadinejad was greeted with lavish ceremony yesterday as he became the first Iranian President to visit Baghdad, a trip some said reflected Iran's great and growing power in Iraq and how severely the U.S. effort to remake Iraq into a Western-friendly democracy has gone awry._

Nearly 4,000 American soldiers have died since the war began in 2003, but Iraq's U.S.-backed government warmly welcomed Washington's No. 1 enemy with flowers and a band.

Apparently ignoring repeated U.S. charges that Iran is destabilizing his country, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani smiled broadly as he greeted Mr. Ahmadinejad outside his palace. Hailing a new era in ties between their states, the two men clasped hands and exchanged traditional kisses on the cheeks before walking together down a red carpet to review an honour guard as a military band played the two national anthems.

Despite the presence of 157,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, the visit left the impression that Iran's President now feels more comfortable in Baghdad than his U.S. counterpart does.

Unlike Mr. Bush's cloak-and-dagger visits here — fly-in trips to heavily guarded U.S. military bases that only last a few hours, often with no advance notice given to even the Iraqi government — Mr. Ahmadinejad's schedule was announced days earlier…

Joost Hiltermann, a regional analyst with the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, noted that the groups now in power in Iraq, including key Shia and Kurdish political factions, are some of same groups that allied themselves with Tehran during the conflict while the United States was supporting Mr. Hussein. Many Iraqi Shia leaders lived in Iran during the war, while Mr. Talabani, a Sunni Kurd, speaks fluent Farsi.

"There was always a contradiction in American policy in Iraq," he said. "If you want to turn Iraq into a democracy, you're going to bring Iran's friends to power.

"If people in Washington are surprised [at the reception for Mr. Ahmadinejad] it's because they didn't understand what they were getting into."

Whether we can "win" or not, whether the "surge" is "working" or not, what will happen if we "lose"--these are all imbecilic questions.

They always have been.

The only important question, the only important consideration since this fiasco started five years ago has always been: what can we "win"?

What will "winning" look like?

And will "winning" be worth the cost?

Three trillion of your dollars. Four thousand dead American sons and daughters, and fathers and mothers. Over twenty thousand seriously wounded American soldiers.

And what did all that "win" you?

A mid-eastern country where the President of the United States can only fly in and out of in the dead of night, while the very nearly insane President of Iran gets greeted with flowers and marching bands.

Playing the Iranian national anthem.

And you paid for it.

And you'll pay for it for the rest of your lives.

And still, through dozens of Democratic and Republican debates, after millions of words in magazines and newspapers and on the Tee Vee, not one single "mainstream" journalist is asking the only question that ever should have been asked about this stupid, expensive, catastrophic, illegal war:

Just what exactly can we hope to "win"?

Liberal Media Wonders Whatever Happened To The Man Who Wasn't There

…Edwards' boundless optimism and energy has his limits, and today he admitted what all the pundits and politicos have been saying for the past month: the Democratic contest is a two-person race, and Edwards is not one of them…

Yes, it is difficult to understand why, as Time Magazine wonders, John Edwards message never caught on with people when all the pundits and all the politicos have been saying for the past month that Edwards isn't even part of the Democratic primary.

When people turn on their TV sets, or open up a magazine or newspaper, or read the news on Al Gore's internets, and all the pundits and all the politicos therein tell them that there are basically two candidates for the Democratic nomination--Obama and Clinton--it sure is a big mystery why a third candidate, John Edwards, somehow couldn't appeal to more people.

Edwards' challenge from the beginning of his presidential quest was to stay relevant…

Yes, Edwards' big challenge was to stay relevant. But what Time Magazine doesn't tell you is that Edwards' big challenge was not to stay relevant to actual voters. No, Edwards' challenge was to stay relevant to Time Magazine.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has released its latest campaign coverage index for January 6-11, a study that does its damndest to try to quantify which political figures are sucking up the most media oxygen and why.

It found that Edwards only got 7% of political coverage during those days -- less than one-fifth of what Hillary earned, and less than one-forth of that accorded to Obama. Edwards even got less attention than Mike Huckabee, even though he, like Edwards, finished third in the New Hampshire primary…

For literally the past year we've been hearing justifications for the fact that Edwards, despite being competitive in Iowa polls, didn't get the attention that his Dem rivals got -- he didn't raise as much money; his candidacy isn't as historic as theirs; etc., etc. Indeed, the virtual media blackout of Edwards got so glaringly obvious that even New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt urged his paper to give Edwards more attention back in November. At a certain point we should just acknowledge that Edwards basically got screwed and that this shouldn't have happened to the extent that it did.

During the primaries, John Edwards, a former Vice Presidential candidate and totally viable candidate for the Presidency of the United States, got seven percent of the political coverage and Time Magazine is explaining to people now that Edwards problem was that he wasn't relevant to voters. Edwards problem was that his message never caught on.

He got one fifth of the press Clinton got and he beat her in Iowa. Can you imagine how well he might have done if he got five times as much press as he got?

Gee, it sure is a mystery worth explaining why his message never caught on with voters who never got to hear it.

[Edwards’ strategy] at first seemed shrewd: build on Edwards' surprisingly good showing in Iowa in 2004 and make his native South Carolina his firewall while garnering union support…

While he managed to pull out a surprising second-place showing in the Iowa caucuses, beating out Clinton, he placed a disappointing third in New Hampshire and his campaign was stunned when he garnered just 4% of the vote in the Nevada caucuses.

At first, Edwards' strategy seemed shrewd! His second place finish in Iowa was surprising! That's the kind of thing that can really breath life into a campaign. And we all remember how shrewd Edwards seemed and how surprising his second place finish was because of all the attention it got!

For instance, let's look at how CNN, a partner of Time Magazine, couldn't stop talking about Edwards' shrewd strategy that led to his surprising second place finish in Iowa!

DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama's victory Thursday in critical Democratic Iowa caucuses indicate voters saw him as a candidate of change, according to entrance polls…

The finish was a blow to Clinton -- the presumptive front-runner in the months leading up to this year's campaign who had hoped a win in Iowa would be the start of an uninterrupted run to the nomination….

"Just over half of Democratic caucus-goers said change was the No. 1 factor they were looking for in a candidate, and 51 percent of those voters chose Barack Obama," said CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider. "That compares to only 19 percent of 'change' caucus-goers who preferred Clinton..."

Twenty percent of Democrats said Clinton's campaign mantra -- experience -- was the most important attribute of a presidential candidate.

At Obama's caucus-night headquarters in Des Moines, the hall filled with people late Thursday in anticipation of the candidate's speech…

Obama's victory came despite Clinton's support from EMILY's List…

The Clinton campaign itself also contacted tens of thousands of Iowans who had never caucused…

Appearing in front of cheering supporters Thursday with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, at her side, Clinton refused to back down...

"I am so ready for the rest of this campaign and I am so ready to lead," she said, smiling.

And there's more. The whole article is about Obama--fine, he won--and Clinton, who came in third.

Edwards, who shrewdly and surprisingly finished second, gets mentioned four times with an entire twenty words devoted to him.

Half of those words were "and", "the", "a", "North Carolina" and "also".

John Edwards campaign, the one that pulled the Democratic party millimeters towards the left where most Americans interests and hearts reside, was killed by your Liberal Media.

They hated him, they ignored him, they buried his message, and wrote him right out of the simple and exciting narrative of a two candidate race between an establishment woman and a fresh faced black man. Which was the story they always wanted to tell and was waaaaaay more interesting to them than writing all that boring blah, blah, blah whatever about falling median incomes and jobs going to Whereeverstan and something stinks and poor people are Americans, too, and whatever!

Let's talk about what's really important in this campaign: is Hillary showing more milky white cleavage these days to counter the fact that most voters think black guys have big dicks? Or maybe she's going totally lesbo with her staffers to triangulate and negate the big, black dick factor!

John Edwards may not have been the best Democratic candidate. I thought he was. But that's a personal preference, and come November I'll gladly, gleefully pull the lever for either Obama or Clinton.

But the John Edwards' Presidency was not killed because of his campaign. It wasn't killed because his message didn't catch on. And it didn't die because of money or relevancy or hair cuts or mansions or any of that other bullshit.

His campaign died because all the pundits and all the politicos killed it. Because they hated it.

And his campaign died because, once again, the good people of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina--three states you'd have a hard time finding anyone else in the remaining 47 states saying are representative of America--got to have their ridiculously disproportionate say in who will be the next President of the United States.

For the Democrats, twenty three of the most populous states in the country have zero say in who is going to be the Democratic candidate until, election after election, the field is narrowed to two.

I live in one of the ten most populous states in the country, and, in the last twenty years, I have never been able to cast even a single vote in a Democratic primary.

But every four years, the people of Iowa have a slate of six or seven or eight candidates.

The people of New Hampshire can vote for any number of candidates.

The people of South Carolina get to cast the deciding votes on whoever's left from Iowa and New Hampshire.

And the other forty seven states have to go along.

Otherwise, their delegates get stripped and they have to go along, anyway.

And afterwards, Time Magazine explains to you that the vote that 98% of you never got to cast for the candidate you never got to see 93% of the time was a clear indication that some message you never got to hear just didn't resonate with Americans.

The Man Who Wasn't There, Part III

The Nation -- In the edgiest debate of the Democratic presidential race, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton repeatedly engaged on Monday night in bitter and at times personal exchanges with one another.

And John Edwards effectively pointed to the heated squabbling between the two frontrunners in anticipation of Saturday's South Carolina Democratic primary as a deviation from the issues that matter…

Clinton accused Obama of doing legal work for a Chicago slumlord and charged that her opponent "did the bidding of the insurance companies" when health care was debated in the Illinois legislature.

Obama told Clinton he was fighting to help workers in Chicago when "you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board of Wal-Mart…"

Way to go, Obama! Way to go, Hillary! Way to get on a national stage and make a powerful case that Democrats are a bunch of hypocritical stooges for corporate interests!

Karl Rove couldn't have said it better! Or for a bigger audience.

Christ, it's like having Joe Lieberman back in the Democratic primaries. Only worse.

I mean, only centrist Democrats, with their DLC Democratic strategists, could unbelievably make the party, whose leading candidates are a woman and a black man and the son of poor mill worker, look like a bunch of sexists and racists, and corporate lackeys.

In a primary of unprecedented, historical, and progressive firsts--where, for the first time in the history of our country, the two leading candidates for President of the United States were candidates simply as people without regard to their race or their sex--and these two idiots have managed to make race and sex an issue.

They seem unable to stop tarring Democrats as racist, sexist, unreasonable, uncivil hypocrits, all the while singing the praises of Ronald Fucking Reagan.

I can barely stand to listen to either one of them.

The Republicans have handed them this election. It's a Democratic White House. And not because of anything Democrats have done. Lord knows they haven't fought against having troops in Iraq until 2018 and beyond. They haven't fought against that appalling Iran resolution. They didn't fight against that awful bankruptcy bill. If their constituents hadn't howled bloody murder--along with Republicans--Democrats would have "compromised" on privatizing Social Security.

Jesus, Obama was bringing it up even after we shouted it down.

The two of them have no stomach whatsoever to fight the worst Republican president and Congress in the history of our country, but they are ready to go bareknuckled at Democrats every chance they get.

In short order, Edwards had gotten the best of both his opponents. That was the order of the night. Again and again, Edwards took the side of one of the frontrunners against the other, effectively serving as an arbiter between the two.

It was an ideal position for Edwards, the outsider candidate who is struggling to distinguish himself from two opponents with more money and better poll positions.

Not to mention the fact that they, as far as Americans know, apparently exist.

But the former senator from North Carolina had to fight for it. More than half an hour into the debate in South Carolina, where voters will participate in a high-stakes Democratic primary on Saturday, CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer had presided over what was essential a showcase for Clinton and Obama.

"Are there three people in this debate, not two?" interjected Edwards. The 2004 Democratic nominee then delivered what may have been the most effective soliloquy of the night. Referencing the bitter back-and-forth between his two opponents, Edwards asked, "This kind of squabbling -- how many children is this going to get health care? How many people are going to get education because of this? How many kids are going to get to go to college because of this?"

"I respect both of my fellow candidates," he continued, "but we have got to understand this is not about us personally. It's about what we are trying to do for this country,'

Of course, Blitzer interrupted. But Edwards held his ground. "Let me finish here," he said. "Lord knows, you let them go on forever."

The crowd cheered as loudly as it had for anything said by Obama or Clinton.

Anyway, there is actually a liberal media. It's tiny and hard to find. But that's how they saw the debate: Edwards won, while Obama and Clinton continued to act like jackasses who'd throw their own mothers under the campaign bus to get elected.

Course, if you, like most of America, read the corporately owned, conservatively dominated, imaginary "liberal" media, you'd know who the real winner in last night's Democratic debate was:

MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina (CNN) -- The gloves came off quickly Monday night as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded blows just days before the South Carolina primary, and two weeks before voters in 24 Super Tuesday states weigh in on this wide-open presidential contest...

Still, there was no clear winner in this Democratic slugfest, the most contentious yet, unless you count John McCain, the Arizona Republican senator who took the gold in last Saturday's South Carolina Republican presidential primary.

That's right--John McCain.

And it shouldn't surprise you that a Republican, in a field of really sorry hopeless Republicans, won a Democratic debate. If you recall, back in November of 2007:

He was nowhere to be found on stage, but Rudy Giuliani's campaign shrewdly rushed to declare victory after Tuesday night's Democratic debate in Philadelphia - chiefly because the former New York mayor emerged as the preferred whipping boy among the seven Democratic rivals.

Shrewdly, said your liberal media, approvingly.

In November of 2007, the presumptive Republican nominee was the clear winner of the Democratic debate in Philadelphia. In January of 2008, the new presumptive Republican nominee was the clear winner in the Democratic debate in South Carolina.

With such a pathetically weak and unpopular Republican field, one can only guess which Republican will win the next Democratic debate!

And that's what Democrats are up against.

And neither Obama, nor Clinton seem to notice or care.

In our time, there is a very real struggle for the soul of our country.

And neither Obama nor Clinton seem to want to fight for it.

They want to talk about unity and civility and inclusiveness, and whatever.

Four years ago, the highest ranking military officers in this country were publicly discussing turning our country into a military dictatorship.

In seven years, we've gone from a $230 billion surplus to nearly doubling the national debt.

We have secret prisons, "First Amendment Zones", millions of missing White House emails, billions of missing dollars, two hopelessly mismanaged wars, warrantless wiretaps, we torture people and destroy the tapes.

This is not the time to be all fucking touchy feely.

This is a time to scrap. And not with the people--Democrats--who didn't create this godawful mess.

John Edwards was a lousy Senator. And he was a lousy Vice Presidential candidate. But he strikes me as a man who tried to play the game and wound up getting played himself. And he's a little smarter now, and little bit bitter about it, and a little bit angry about it. And he doesn't need the money, and he doesn't need the fame, and all he wants to do is feel his fingers wrap around the tape.

And we ought to put the bat in his hands.

He might be full of shit. But, honestly, he's the only one promising to swing it.