Breaking! McCain to Revoke Palin Nomination

Look at the kid in the lower left corner. Is that not the spawn of Satan?

from Josh at TPM

Face It: They Didn't Vet Her

Earlier I noted Andrea Mitchell's reference to reports that the McCain camp had just sent a team of GOP lawyers up to Alaska to do what I guess you'd call a post-vetting of Sarah Palin. Now George Stephanopoulos appears to have more. George says the McCainers are sending a "rapid response team of about ten operatives that includes lawyers" to do the aforementioned deeper vet. A lot of attention is being given to Gov. Palin's daughter's situation. The much bigger deal is the expanding trooper-gate investigation, the fact that Palin lied in her Friday speech about her purported opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere, her apparent former membership in the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, and more. Individually, you can come to your own judgment about how consequential these stories are. What they show pretty clearly now -- in addition to the news that the McCain campaign is only now sending in a vetting team -- is that John McCain didn't do any serious vetting of Palin before he invited her to join his ticket and, he hopes, become Vice President of the United States.

Gus, Isn't that the "semen" of satan?

Whoops, just posted this elsewhere. Good summary of what's up.

Great video of Campbell Brown eviscerating McCain's Tucker Bounds who. atonishingly, claims that Palin is ready to be CIC because of she is commander of the AK National Guard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYYiw_y2qDI&eurl=http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

nytimes.com

Disclosures on Palin Raise Questions on Vetting Process
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

ST. PAUL " A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

Among other less attention-grabbing news of the day: it was learned that Ms. Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner; that she was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede; and that Mr. Palin was arrested 22 years ago on a drunken-driving charge.

Aides to Mr. McCain said they had a team on the ground in Alaska now to look more thoroughly into Ms. Palin’s background. A Republican with ties to the campaign said the team assigned to vet Ms. Palin in Alaska had not arrived there until Thursday, a day before Mr. McCain stunned the political world with his vice-presidential choice. The campaign was still calling Republican operatives as late as Sunday night asking them to go to Alaska to deal with the unexpected candidacy of Ms. Palin.

Although the McCain campaign said that Mr. McCain had known about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy before he asked her mother to join him on the ticket and that he did not consider it disqualifying, top aides were vague on Monday about how and when he had learned of the pregnancy, and from whom.

While there was no sign that her formal nomination this week was in jeopardy, the questions swirling around Ms. Palin on the first day of the Republican National Convention, already disrupted by Hurricane Gustav, brought anxiety to Republicans who worried that Democrats would use the selection of Ms. Palin to question Mr. McCain’s judgment and his ability to make crucial decisions.

At the least, Republicans close to the campaign said it was increasingly apparent that Ms. Palin had been selected as Mr. McCain’s running mate with more haste than McCain advisers initially described.

Up until midweek last week, some 48 to 72 hours before Mr. McCain introduced Ms. Palin at a Friday rally in Dayton, Ohio, Mr. McCain was still holding out the hope that he could choose a good friend, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, a Republican close to the campaign said. Mr. McCain had also been interested in another favorite, former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania.

But both men favor abortion rights, anathema to the Christian conservatives who make up a crucial base of the Republican Party. As word leaked out that Mr. McCain was seriously considering the men, the campaign was bombarded by outrage from influential conservatives who predicted an explosive floor fight at the convention and vowed rejection of Mr. Ridge or Mr. Lieberman by the delegates.

Perhaps more important, several Republicans said, Mr. McCain was getting advice that if he did not do something to shake up the race, his campaign would be stuck on a potentially losing trajectory.

With time running out " and as Mr. McCain discarded two safer choices, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, as too predictable " he turned to Ms. Palin. He had his first face-to-face interview with her on Thursday and offered her the job moments later. Advisers to Mr. Pawlenty and another of the finalists on Mr. McCain’s list described an intensive vetting process for those candidates that lasted one to two months.

“They didn’t seriously consider her until four or five days from the time she was picked, before she was asked, maybe the Thursday or Friday before,” said a Republican close to the campaign. “This was really kind of rushed at the end, because John didn’t get what he wanted. He wanted to do Joe or Ridge.”

In the final stages, two Republicans familiar with the process said, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, emerged as a key advocate for Ms. Palin.

Mr. McCain’s advisers said repeatedly on Monday that Ms. Palin was “thoroughly vetted,” a process that would have included a review of all financial and legal records as well as a criminal background check. A McCain aide said the campaign was well aware of the ethics investigation and had looked into it.

“It was obviously something that anybody Googling Sarah Palin knew was in the news and there was a very thorough vetting done on that and also on the daughter,” the aide said.

People familiar with the process said Ms. Palin had responded to a standard form with more than 70 questions. Although The Washington Post quoted advisers to Mr. McCain on Sunday as saying Ms. Palin had been subjected to an F.B.I. background check, an F.B.I. official said Monday the bureau did not vet potential candidates and had not known of her selection until it was made public.

Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s closest adviser, said in an e-mail message that Ms. Palin had been interviewed by Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr., a veteran Washington lawyer in charge of the vice-presidential vetting process for Mr. McCain, as well as by other lawyers who worked for Mr. Culvahouse. Mr. Salter did not respond to an e-mail message asking if Ms. Palin had told Mr. Culvahouse and his lawyers that her daughter was pregnant.

In Alaska, several state leaders and local officials said they knew of no efforts by the McCain campaign to find out more information about Ms. Palin before the announcement of her selection, Although campaigns are typically discreet when they make inquiries into potential running mates, officials in Alaska said Monday they thought it was peculiar that no one in the state had the slightest hint that Ms. Palin might be under consideration.

“They didn’t speak to anyone in the Legislature, they didn’t speak to anyone in the business community,” said Lyda Green, the State Senate president, who lives in Wasilla, where Ms. Palin served as mayor.

Representative Gail Phillips, a Republican and former speaker of the State House, said the widespread surprise in Alaska when Ms. Palin was named to the ticket made her wonder how intensively the McCain campaign had vetted her.

“I started calling around and asking, and I have not been able to find one person that was called,” Ms. Phillips said. “I called 30 to 40 people, political leaders, business leaders, community leaders. Not one of them had heard. Alaska is a very small community, we know people all over, but I haven’t found anybody who was asked anything.”

The current mayor of Wasilla, Dianne M. Keller, said she had not heard of any efforts to look into Ms. Palin’s background. And Randy Ruedrich, the state Republican Party chairman, said he knew nothing of any vetting that had been conducted.

State Senator Hollis French, a Democrat who is directing the ethics investigation, said that no one asked him about the allegations. “I heard not a word, not a single contact,” he said.

A number of Republicans said the McCain campaign had to some degree tied its hands in its effort to keep the selection process so secret.

“If you really want it to be a surprise, the circle of people that you’re going to allow to know about it is going to be small, and that’s just the nature of it,” said Dan Bartlett, a former counselor to President Bush.

Former McCain strategists disagreed on whether it would have been useful for Ms. Palin’s name to have been more publicly floated before her selection so that issues like the trooper investigation and her daughter’s pregnancy might have already been aired and not seemed so new at the time of her announcement.

“It’s a risk,” said Dan Schnur, a former McCain aide who now directs the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California. “No matter how great the candidate, it’s a significant risk to put someone on the ticket” who hasn’t been publicly scrutinized.

“They obviously felt it was worth the risk to rev up the base and potentially reach out to Clinton supporters,” Mr. Schnur said.

Reporting was contributed by Kate Zernike, Jim Rutenberg and Peter Baker in St. Paul, and Serge F. Kovaleski in Juneau, Alaska.

Bernard Shaw once said that if women are given the vote we will all end up talking about their ovaries.

Tell us all how STUPID you feel today.

Two More Polls Show Obama's Lead Expanding
By Eric Kleefeld - September 2, 2008, 9:46AM

It's starting to look like John McCain's historic selection of Sarah Palin hasn't done him any favors in the polls.

Here's this morning's Rasmussen tracking poll: Obama 51%, McCain 45%, outside of the ±2% margin of error. Obama was up 49%-46% yesterday, suggesting that Palin's scandals may have helped him to double his lead in just one day of sampling.

And the new Hotline/Diageo poll has Obama up 48%-39%, compared to a 44%-40% lead from just one week ago.

dailykos.com
Recapping Palin's Secession Scandal
by georgia10
Tue Sep 02, 2008 at 06:54:06 AM PDT

If you spent yesterday at a Labor Day picnic rather than at the computer, you missed the story that broke here regarding Sarah Palin's 1990s membership in the Alaskan Independence Party (AIP).

Note I said Independence not Independent. It's not just an "independent" party--it is a party whose explicit goal is to have a vote on Alaskan independence.

So, without further ado, what we know so far (all the information, and much, much more can be found here, here, here, and here):

* As user Liz Arnett first informed us yesterday morning, the AIP is a political party in Alaska whose motto is "Alaska First." It's goal is to have a vote on Alaska's state status so that Alaskans may decide whether the state should secede, become a territory, become a commonwealth, or remain a state.
* The AIP has what most Americans would qualify as radical views on the relationship between the federal government and Alaska, including a belief that the federal government should be dissolved if gun rights are ever abolished or curtailed, a belief that the federal government is in breach of the Constitution, and complete opposition to environmental regulations and public ownership of Alaskan land.
* Yesterday night, it was is confirmed that Sarah Palin and her husband were members of the AIP at least in 1994. Indeed, Palin reportedly attended the AIP convention.
* In 2007, the Vice Chairman of the AIP, Dexter Clark, not only referenced Palin's membership, but also said that since she joined the GOP, "she is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership." Clark also goes on to discuss the need to "infiltrate" the major parties.
* In 2008, Palin recorded a message for the AIP's annual convention, stating that Alaska has "a great promise to be a self-sufficient state" and encouraging them to "keep up the good work."

Still no statement from the McCain/Palin camp on these developments. We'll be posting more on this story throughout the day.

S/he won't. S/he's a moron. Someday I'll realize that I should just ignore s/him.

S/he's making all Obama supporters look bad.

please... roxx is as stereotypical of an obama supporter as Rexred is of a McCain supporter. Fanatical fringe folks are just that - fanatical. Both side have them, both sides are equally prone to falling into the 80-20 trap (or 95-5, in this case) of spending WAY Too Much Energy on fanatics.

Yup...

I hear you....but this Palin baby thing wasn't just a Roxxxanne being Roxxxanne news item, this was all over the place on several blogs that I read. Several of the normal/sane Obama supporters were in here supporting this thread/ideas.

Palin does not represent me in the slightest (except for her 2nd amendment views), but this thread/topic was so over the top that everyone involved should be ashamed of themselves.

I mean, Obama supporters in particular have been saying OVER AND OVER about how we should just focus on the issues....and then here we are.

Over 1600 views in four days (400 a day) That is a lot of traffic for A2K. Apparently this is the A2K Sarah Palin "thread of record."

Thanks for the support. (Although many of you take this stuff WAY too seriously.)

More priceless Sarah Palin moments for your enjoyment.

Palin: Exactly what does a VP do every day

See Sarah lie

Sarah addresses fringe Alaska First secessionist group (video)

Sarah Palin, why do you hate America?

Jon Stewart, Colbert mock Palin

How do you know anybody else wanted the job?

I mean to say folks--Obama/Biden versus McCain/Palin in a nation of 300 million looks a bit suspicious. Putin is out shooting tigers and running loose in Georgia and all you lot can do is huff and puff.

Has anybody ever seen Putin's or Medeved's wife and families? I haven't and here we are with the Gutsy Broad, Michelle, Cindy Lou and Sarah seemingly running the show.

I did a Google. It says that Putin has dumped his wife and is shacked up with a nubile gymnast half his age.

is not a soccer ALSO Roxxxanne?

Momentum may be building to dump Palin

And a lot of questions need to be answered like "Who is running the McCain campaign?"

Who are you and who is Roxanne and why does Sarah Palin hate Polar Bears?

So many questions, so few answers.