Thank You, John McCain

The more I'm learning about Gov. Sarah Palin, and now having heard the McCain's weak justification for it, the more I'm convinced McCain just conceded the election.

McCain's political director just told Campbell Brown on CNN that Palin is qualified to be commander in chief because she was the commander of the Alaska National Guard and has a son who will be going to Iraq.

Gov. Palin is completely unqualified to stand in for a President should that need arise.

Nothing shows McCain's poor judgment as much as this choice. He picked a VP candidate he had met one time before their meeting this weekend. So much for his claim that he prides himself on having strong personal relationships with the people he surrounds himself with.

Campbell says stay tuned, we'll have more on this candidate who is "poised to become a Republican superstar." Hardly, I think she will crash and burn faster than any national candidate in recent memory.

Her complete lack of national experience matters a great deal. I can just see the next 3 am telephone call ad. America won't be laughing. If she had any good sense, she would have turned McCain's offer down and refused to be used as a pawn to grab evangelical and suburban women voters.

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Palin Hits Clinton's "Whine"

If John McCain believes that he can wipe away his large deficit among female voters by appealing to disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters through the pick of Sarah Palin, he might have to think again. Take a look at Palin talking about the "perceived[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mydd/~3/378527505/516

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Palin Hits Clinton's "Whine"

If John McCain believes that he can wipe away his large deficit among female voters by appealing to disaffected Hillary Clinton supporters through the pick of Sarah Palin, he might have to think again. Take a look at Palin talking about the "perceived[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mydd/~3/378527505/516

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Ignoring McCain attacks on same day, CNN's Harris
called McCain's congratulatory ad "a nice touch"

Referring to an ad released by the McCain campaign onAugust 28 in which Sen. John McCain congratulates Sen. Barack Obama onreceiving the Democratic presidential nomination and says, "Tomorrowwe'll be back at it, but tonight, Senator, job well done," CNN Newsroom co-host Tony Harris said onAugust 29: "I thought it was a nice touch to see the John McCain adcongratulating Barack Obama on the historic achievement. I thought it was anice touch. I guess some would quibble with it, but I won't be one[...]

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http://feeds.mediamatters.org/~r/mediamatters/latest/~3/378524275/200808290021

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Scooby Doo And the Missing Flags

  Thanks to John Cole for the comedy gold of yesterday. The folks at Red State noticed that convention-going Democrats didn’t walk around waving their cheap flags on sticks all the time like good nationalist zealots Republicans do. So they set out to find all those tens of thousands of flags that had been evident in pictures of the [...]

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http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/08/29/scooby-doo-and-the-missing-flags/

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FDIC warns on banks

Can you imagine how much worse things can get with ? His good friend Phil Gramm helped create this record of failure and that's who McCain believes is an expert. The worst thing is that this is not even close to being finished. But remember, the Republicans are the economic experts.

The number of problem banks on a regulatory watch list increased to 117 by the end of the second quarter from 90 at the end of the first quarter, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp said.

The combined assets of the problem banks increased to $78 billion from $26 billion, the agency said.

The housing slump and worsening economic conditions forced U.S. banks to set aside $50.2 billion in loan loss provisions during the second quarter, http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifthe FDIC said in its quarterly industry update.

That figure is more than four times the $11.4 billion that the industry set aside in the second quarter last year.

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Uh-Oh

The Post's James Grimaldi got an exclusive interview with Walter Monegan, the canned Alaska Public Safety Commissioner at the center of Palin trooper-gate scandal. And he basically says Palin is lying in her assertion that while some of her aides[...]

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Some things you didn't know about Sarah Palin

Sarah Palin was had political experience only as a small town mayor until less than two years ago. What we don't know about her could fill a book. Here are a few things we're learning about Palin.

Sarah Palin left the finances of her town Wasilla in tatters when she moved on in 2002 (h/t xgz). She wanted a legacy as mayor, it seems, and pushed hard for the town to build a hyper-expensive sports complex. But Palin screwed the process up badly. Instead of buying the land for the complex when it was offered, her administration allowed a developer named Gary Lundgren to snap it up. Then Wasilla tried to seize the land from Lundgren through eminent domain. In the end, what with court costs Wasilla paid at least $ 1.7 million for land it could have bought for less than one tenth that sum - if the purchase had been handled properly. For this incompetence, Wasilla is still paying a steep price: higher taxes and cutbacks in services. In other words Palin is about as efficient as Michael Brown, onetime head of FEMA.

Diarist loyalson, a resident of Wasilla, has more to say about the damage Palin did to his town while she was mayor.

On the single most debated issue of our times, the Iraq war, Sarah Palin similarly was out to lunch until as recently as last spring. Shortly after becoming governor, she was asked her views on the surge (h/t LizzyPop):

Alaska Business Monthly: We've lost a lot of Alaska's military members to the war in Iraq. How do you feel about sending more troops into battle, as President Bush is suggesting?

Palin: I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments, and while I support our president, Condoleezza Rice and the administration, I want to know that we have an exit plan in place; I want assurances that we are doing all we can to keep our troops safe. Every life lost is such a tragedy.

John McCain would have us believe that Iraq is the central battle in the war on terror, and yet he selects as his running mate somebody who was paying almost no attention to the Iraq war for 4 long years after the invasion.

So what was Palin focused on?

Alaska Business Monthly: It's extremely early to ask this, but when your tenure as governor is over, what would you like to have accomplished? How would you like to be remembered?

Palin: I want people to remember me as having always conducted the state's business in an upright and honest manner. I want them to understand that I put Alaska first in every decision I made.

Try to square that with the troopergate scandal, in which Palin allegedly misused her power as governor by bringing inappropriate pressure for two employees to be fired. What's perhaps most interesting is that Palin appears to have begun misusing power almost as soon as she got any real power.

Speaking of inconsistencies, earlier this month Palin praised Barack Obama's energy plan (h/t Excelscior1). Here is the cached version of the press release that had been posted at the Governor's website. The original document has been scrubbed sometime during the last day (since Aug. 28). I wonder if that could have anything to do with McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate?

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Palintology

I can see the logic behind McCain's choice of Sarah Palin to be his running mate: Appease the religious right, appeal to disgruntled Hillary supporters (I guess he assumes that women will just blindly vote for anyone with a vagina), and give the ticket[...]

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http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/29/palintology/

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Palin Is The Perfect Conservative / Republican
Pick

Sarah Palin is a total wingnut:"Pat Buchanan brought his conservative message of a smaller[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/378554632/showDiary.do

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