Say Anything Blog

Another week, another Frank Luntz/AARP focus group of undecided voters—this one in Minneapolis and with some bad news for John McCain: they don’t like the choice of Sarah Palin for vice president. Only one person said Palin made him more likely to vote for McCain; about half the 25-member group raised their hands when asked if Palin made them less likely to vote for McCain. They had a negative impression of Palin by a 2-1 margin…a fact that was reinforced when they were given hand-dials and asked to react to Palin’s speech at her first appearance with McCain on Friday—-the dials remained totally neutral as Palin went through her heart-warming(?) biography, and only blipped upwards when she said she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere—which wasn’t quite the truth, as we now know.

Then there was this, from a woman named Teresa, who went to the Democratic Convention as a Hillary delegate and is leaning toward voting for McCain—obviously the target audience for the Palin pick: “His age didn’t really bother me until he picked Palin. What if he dies in office and leaves us with her as President? Also she leans toward the rigid right, and I always thought he was a moderate…You know, I change my mind almost every day, but right now I"m wondering where the John McCain I really liked in 2000 went, what happened to the moderate? This John McCain has the look of someone who is being manipulated—probably by Karl Rove.”

Teresa still wasn’t willing to vote for Obama, whom she considers too inexperienced, but she was clearly wavering. Afterwards Luntz, good Republican that he is, made the case that Palin could win all these people back with a good convention speech, but that seemed far-fetched to me. They really saw this pick as a gimmick—and one that reflected badly on John McCain’s judgment. [SwampLand]

Video

Counterbalancing McCain’s reputation as a political dinosaur, Palin smoked pot when it was legal in Alaska, admitting, “I can’t claim a Bill Clinton and say I never inhaled”, and her children, Track, 19, Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, Piper, 7, and Trig, four months, have hippie-sounding names. Track, who joined the US infantry in September last year, is about to be deployed to Iraq. “It has really opened my eyes to international events and how war impacts everyday Americans like us,” she said.

I’m liking her more and more.

JUNEAU, AK — Former oil worker Richard St. Joseph released the top portion of what he claims is a nude photograph of presumptive GOP vice presidential nominee Governor Sarah Palin.

St. Joseph, a retired custodial engineer for Exxon Mobile, dated the governor for a brief time in the early 80’s.

“I took the picture after we downed a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Wine during a Christopher Cross concert,” St. Joseph said.

People Magazine and In Touch Weekly have both made undisclosed offers for the bottom portion of the photograph, although St. Joseph has confirmed that the current high bidder is Alaskan Hockey MILF Magazine.

When asked to describe the contents of the photograph, a laughing St. Joseph responded, “It’s true about what they say about Alaskan women’s shaving habits, or I guess I should say lack there of.”

While Palin, who is preparing to speak at next week’s Republican National Convention, refused to comment on alleged photo, the Obama campaign was quick to react.

“This is shocking,” said Obama spokesperson Adrian Marsh.  “It’s clearly an attempt steal the strong lesbian following that backed Gov. Hillary Clinton.”

[CelebJihad]

I laughed. Now, I know some of you won’t find it funny. I just laughed again.

When asked to judge the Bush administration this morning during an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said “history will judge that” but then immediately began making an attempt to distance himself from President Bush. One area of “disagreement” McCain cited was torture:

McCAIN: I obviously don’t want to torture any prisoners. There’s a long list of areas that we were in disagreement on –

WALLACE: You’re not suggesting he did want to torture prisoners.

McCAIN: Well, waterboarding to me is torture, OK? And waterboarding was advocated by the administration and, according to published reports, was used. But the point is, we’ve had our disagreements.

Watch it:

McCain seems to forget that he voted against a bill that would have banned the CIA from using waterboarding. In fact, when the bill passed, McCain urged Bush to veto it, which he did. Thus, McCain’s claim that he “obviously doesn’t want to torture prisoners” rings hollow. Indeed, because of Bush’s veto, the CIA retains the option of waterboarding prisoners:

Still, waterboarding remains in the CIA’s tool kit. The technique can be used, but it requires the consent of the attorney general and president on a case-by-case basis. Bush wants to keep that option open.

“I cannot sign into law a bill that would prevent me, and future presidents, from authorizing the CIA to conduct a separate, lawful intelligence program, and from taking all lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack,” Bush said in a statement.

McCain also said he differed from Bush on climate change, yet he plans to run on the GOP’s election platform, which is “loaded with caveats about the uncertainty of science and the need to ‘resist no-growth radicalism’ in taking on climate change.”

“I’ve been called a quote maverick,” McCain told Wallace, arguing his point. Yet McCain and his conservative allies have yet to indicate how his administration would be anything but a third Bush term.[ThinkProgress]

Republicans have been heavily touting Sarah Palin’s reformist credentials, with her supposed opposition to Alaska’s “Bridge to Nowhere” as Exhibit A. But how hard did she really fight the project? Not very, it seems. Here’s what she told the Anchorage Daily News on October 22, 2006, during the race for the governor’s seat (via Nexis):

5. Would you continue state funding for the proposed Knik Arm and Gravina Island bridges?

Yes. I would like to see Alaska’s infrastructure projects built sooner rather than later. The window is now—while our congressional delegation is in a strong position to assist.

So she was very much for the bridge and insisted that Alaska had to act quickly—the party of Ted Stevens and Don Young might soon lose its majority, after all. By that point, the project was endangered for reasons that had nothing to do with Palin—the bridge had become a national laughingstock, Congress had stripped away the offending earmark, shifting the money back to the state’s general fund, and future federal support seemed unlikely. True, after Palin was sworn into office that fall, her first budget didn’t allocate any money for the bridge. But when the Daily News asked on December 16, 2006, if she now opposed the project, Palin demurred and said she was just trying to figure out where the bridge fit on the state’s list of transportation priorities, given the lack of support from Congress. Finally, on September 19, 2007, she decided to redirect funds away from the project altogether with this sorry-sounding statement:

“Ketchikan desires a better way to reach the airport, but the $398 million bridge is not the answer,” said Governor Palin. “Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island,” Governor Palin added. “Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.”

Maybe I’ve missed something, but it sure looks like she was fine with the bridge in principle, never had a problem with the earmarks, bristled at all the mockery, and only gave up on the project when it was clear that federal support wasn’t forthcoming. Now, Charles Homans, who knows Alaska well, says Palin’s anti-corruption instincts are fairly solid (she sold off the gubenatorial jet upon taking office, for one), and a casual Nexis search suggests that she’s fiscally conservative (insofar as that term makes sense in a quasi-socialist state like Alaska), but this hardly looks like the “Mr. Smith Goes To Washington” moment everyone’s making it out to be.

P.S. Here’s a piece that Palin’s special counsel, John Katz, wrote in March of this year for the Juneau Empire, assuring the Alaskan public that Palin was still very much in favor of earmarks, but sadly needed to scale back her requests somewhat (to “only” 31 earmarks this year—down from 54 last year) in response to “unwanted attention” from Congress and the press. [TheNewRepublic]

—Bradford Plumer

"She’s not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she’s done to this state. What would she do to the nation?”

Sen. Lyda Green, president of the state Senate and a Republican from Palin’s hometown of Wasilla

“Sarah Palin’s chief qualification for being elected governor was that she was not Frank Murkowski. She was not elected because she was a conservative. She was not elected because of her grasp of issues or because of her track record ...”

Dermot Cole, a longtime columnist for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

“She’s old enough. She’s a U.S. citizen.”

John Harris(R), Alaskan Speaker of the House

Protesters here in Minneapolis have been targeted by a series of highly intimidating, sweeping police raids across the city, involving teams of 25-30 officers in riot gear, with semi-automatic weapons drawn, entering homes of those suspected of planning protests, handcuffing and forcing them to lay on the floor, while law enforcement officers searched the homes, seizing computers, journals, and political pamphlets. Last night, members of the St. Paul police department and the Ramsey County sheriff’s department handcuffed, photographed and detained dozens of people meeting at a public venue to plan a demonstration, charging them with no crime other than “fire code violations,” and early this morning, the Sheriff’s department sent teams of officers into at least four Minneapolis area homes where suspected protesters were staying.
Continued…With Video

Republicans are the oil and Freedom of Speech is the water.

A Washington law firm filed a lawsuit yesterday against KBR, one of the largest U.S. contractors in Iraq, alleging that the company and its Jordanian subcontractor engaged in the human trafficking of Nepali workers.

Agnieszka Fryszman, a partner at Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, said 13 Nepali men, between the ages of 18 and 27, were recruited in Nepal to work as kitchen staff in hotels and restaurants in Amman, Jordan. But once the men arrived in Jordan, their passports were seized and they were told they were being sent to a military facility in Iraq, Fryszman said.

As the men were driven in cars to Iraq, they were stopped by insurgents. Twelve were kidnapped and later executed, Fryszman said. The thirteenth man survived and worked in a warehouse in Iraq for 15 months before returning to Nepal.

The lawsuit, filed in a federal court in California on behalf of the workers’ families and the survivor, claims that the trafficking scheme was engineered by KBR and its Jordanian subcontractor, Daoud & Partners, according to Fryszman.

This spring, an administrative law judge at the Department of Labor, which has jurisdiction over cases that involve on the job injuries at overseas military bases, ordered Daoud to pay $1 million to the families of 11 of the victims. Attempts to reach officials at Daoud were unsuccessful. A phone message was left at their office in Dubai and e-mails were sent seeking comment.

Heather Browne, a spokeswoman for KBR wrote in an e-mailed statement: “KBR has not seen the lawsuit so it is premature for us to comment at this time. The safety and security of all employees and those the company serves remains KBR’s top priority. The company in no way condones or tolerates unethical or illegal behavior.” [Washington Post]

Here’s the quote from Obama out of which McCain created his current fear-mongering and outright deceptive ad:

“Strong countries and strong Presidents talk to their adversaries. That’s what Kennedy did with Khrushchev. That’s what Reagan did with Gorbachev. That’s what Nixon did with Mao. I mean, think about it: Iran, Cuba, Venezuela—these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. And yet we were willing to talk to the Soviet Union at the time when they were saying, ‘We’re going to wipe you off the planet.’ And ultimately, that direct engagement led to a series of measures that helped prevent nuclear war and over time allowed the kind of opening that brought down the Berlin Wall.”

What does McCain disagree with in that? And do yourself a favor. Read the quote and then watch the ad. Now think about what it says about McCain that he would lie this blatantly for power.[TheDailyDish]

By John Lorenz

This is the second instance that I’ve found today alone of the Associated Press masquerading partisan editorializing as hard, objective news reports.  The second example of such violation of the standards of objectivity that are supposed to apply appeared on Yahoo News on the day of Biden’s being named Obama’s Vice Presidential pick.
The first example of Associated Press partisan bias in reporting the news came earlier the same day. An hour after the announcement of Biden being picked, in the wee hours of the morning when I couldn’t sleep, I found the announcement from Barack Obama’s campaign of his V.P. pick in my email because I have been a supporter of the Obama campaign.

I went on to look over the Yahoo News headlines on my main browser page, and there I saw a headline that caught my eye. Among the other news headlines was an Associated Press article that looked like a hit piece on Obama because it proclaimed “Choice of Biden Shows (Obama) lack of Confidence.” This sort of angered me because even on the face of it, it looked unfair. As it turned out, it was “analysis” written by Associated Press Washington Bureau Chief, Ron Fournier. So I “Googled” Ron Fournier and with a little bit of sleuthing, found out that Ron Fournier became notorious during Congressional hearings into Karl Rove, in that this Bureau Chief appeared in emails to Rove expressing friendship and solidarity with Rove. Fournier, the writer of this hit piece on Obama’s pick for VP is, not coincidentally, a Karl Rove buddy.
Then I found the second hit on Obama-Biden when another Associated Press story appeared on the Yahoo News headline line-up regarding Biden’s “first appearance speech” in Springfield, in which Biden attacked John McCain and his being a continuation of George W. Bush’s policies.
In this second so-called ‘news story’ I noted that the author, AP’s Liz Sidoti, was “reporting” on the high points of what Biden said, but after each statement of Biden’s criticizing McCain, Ms. Sidoti immediately interwove an objection to what Biden had said, apparently feeling the need to ‘counterbalance’ Biden with ‘extenuating facts’ in defense of McCain. Either she did that, or else she would insert editorializing of her own about how Biden’s assertions “left out important facts” that should be considered, as she saw it, in exoneration of McCain or feeling the need to attack Biden’s accusations.
I did a little bit of Internet sleuthing once again, and “Googled” AP press writer, Liz Sidoti and I came across a blogger’s comment in which he mentioned Ms. Sidoti’s hit piece a while back when she attacked Obama for opting out of public campaign financing. This time, disguised once again as Associated Press ‘analysis’ Liz Sidoti slammed Obama’s decision to forsake public campaign financing, being very sanctimonious in her article. She conspicuously failed to include any counterbalancing information exposing John McCain’s wrongdoing in illegally attempting to remove himself from the campaign finance system after financially benefitting from it, which was supposed to be punishable by five years in jail. The ‘analysis’ of Ms. Sidoti left that information out of her hit piece on Obama. As a post script, I recently read the news that McCain has since been miraculously let off the hook for his violation of campaign law. It turned out that Ms. Sidoti knew about McCain’s campaign finance scandal because the news had come out just two days before her hit piece on Obama. But she didn’t interweave any defense of Obama into her ‘analysis,’ nor did she criticize McCain for his wrongdoing like she did when she wrote about Joe Biden’s speech where she jumped to the defense of McCain in her ‘reporting’. Continued…

Upon further research, Karl Rove had exchanged emails with AP’s Ron Fournier the day the news broke of Cpl. Pat Tillman’s death by friendly fire indicating an allegiance. Fournier, now the wire service’s D.C. bureau chief, stating in one of the emails, “Because I’m on your side.” Ron Fournier did not write any articles on the Tillman death.

Now to be fair, I will not say unequivocally AP has a right-wing bias because that would be a sweeping generalization. I will say that the assumption by some that the AP has a left-wing bias is a prevarication and in Republicanese translates into, “This article isn’t nice towards us, therefore let’s attack the messenger to undermine the article and ignore the facts.”