ADN

YESTERDAY'S Gal lup poll had John McCain ahead of Barack Obama by an astonishing 10 points among likely voters. A Washington Post poll had that lead at only two points, but clearly showed a McCain surge - especially among women. This wasn't what Democrats were expecting when they left Denver - yet they have nobody to blame but themselves.

Obama's toughest challenge has always been to connect with working-class swing voters. So attacking the poster child for small-town values, Sarah Palin, was a bad strategy.

No, Obama didn't engage in the mass sneering at Palin - but he did fall into the trap of disrespecting her. When McCain chose her, the Obama campaign's first response was to ridicule the size of her town. Then the candidate himself began referring to her as a "former mayor" when she is in fact a sitting governor.

When she retaliated (justifiably) by mocking his stint as a organizer, the Obama camp was clearly rattled. Obama himself actually began arguing about the importance of community organizing. His supporters amplified this cry - claiming Palin's attack was a racist slur and passing around e-mails titled "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor."

Meanwhile, the rest of the country was probably wondering what being a community organizer has to do with being president.

Lured by the McCain camp, Obama supporters engaged in an argument about who had more overall experience - the top of the Democratic ticket or the bottom of the GOP ticket. This diminished Obama.

Meanwhile, the media lit up in all their cultural-elite splendor.

Alaska? they sneered. It has the population of Las Vegas! Funny how the coastal elite only sneers at red states with small populations. Howard Dean hailed from a blue state with almost the same population as Alaska and was a national phenomenon and front-runner for the presidency. Joe Biden's Delaware has a similarly small population - but no mocking was forthcoming there.

Evangelicals will never vote for a woman who works! they declared. This from people who've likely never met an evangelical in their lives. They could barely contain themselves when they found out Gov. Palin's daughter was pregnant, so sure were they that evangelicals would hang her from the highest tree. When evangelical leaders expressed support, there was a palpable disappointment that Palin or her daughter wasn't branded with a scarlet letter.

They claimed that the Palin announcement was some desperate pick that came out of nowhere. Had they been doing their jobs, or even perusing The Weekly Standard or right-wing blogs, they'd have known that she was on the list.

Since they didn't know anything about her, they started making things up. Anything that fit the caricature of a right-wing hypocrite was thrown up with, seemingly, no fact-checking.

They said she opposes contraception, when she said in a campaign debate that she is pro-contraception. They said she cut funding for pregnant teens, when she provided a massive funding hike.

They accused her of cutting funding for mentally disabled children, when she raised it 175 percent over the former administration. She was said to have been a member of the wacky Alaska Independence Party; The New York Times had to run a retraction.

Like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, Palin has been deemed one of the GOP's rising stars. Since it's national reporters job to cover American politics, their ignorance of about her is distressing.

Most Americans think that the media are cheerleading for Obama, so they'll punish him for the reporters' and editors' sins.

So now he is weighted down with more baggage as he works to convince an important voting bloc that he and his party don't hold them in contempt.

The clock is ticking.

raum wrote:when he called her a small time former mayor

During her term in office, Palin cut property taxes and other small taxes on business. But as the Anchorage Daily News points out, “She wasn’t doing this by shrinking government.” During her tenure, the budget of Wasilla (population 5,469 in 2000) “apart from capital projects and debt, rose from $3.9 million in fiscal 1996 to $5.8 million.”

Palin also successfully pushed through a sales tax increase in Wasilla, which went to fund a $15 million sports complex. However, a land dispute over the sight of the complex led to “years of legal wrangling” and cost Wasilla almost $1.7 million, “a lot more than the roughly $125,000 the city would have paid in 1998 if it had closed a deal to buy the property outright.” Wasilla is still facing budget shortfalls from the case today.

When Palin left office in 2002, Wasilla had “racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt,” or roughly $3,000 of debt per resident. 

Kumicho wrote:Even still, the things I'm learning about Gov Palin from various non-partisan sources suggests that she's certainly a politician, and has done her fair share of truth stretching and politics just like all the other ones...

As far as lowering her salary goes, I doubt that has been a person in office that simply worth their annual salary...I'm sure that she's making groceries just fine w/the paycut...It's not like she was making 40K a year, and then decided she could get by on 25K...I think that the act is profound indeed, but I'll take a little salt with that...

It still does not make me feel better about their character when they come out on the attack...This whole election process, the only thing I've noticed about Barak that separates him from the rest of the candidates is that he has consistently taken the high road...Hilary talked shit about him, and he never went there with her...And as far as I can tell, he hasn't went there w/McCain either...

raum wrote:I mean, isn't that what she was..? I'm from a small town, dirt roads, one stop light small towns...From a town about the same size as that one as a matter of fact...Shit, I couldn't tell you the name of any mayor of my town, past or present, if I was subjected to torture...And this bothers me:

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During her term in office, Palin cut property taxes and other small taxes on business. But as the Anchorage Daily News points out, “She wasn’t doing this by shrinking government.” During her tenure, the budget of Wasilla (population 5,469 in 2000) “apart from capital projects and debt, rose from $3.9 million in fiscal 1996 to $5.8 million.”[/quote]

The small town she is from became a much bigger town when previously there was no real action into the resources of alaska beyond a gentle tapping.  She took some money from Washington which has awarded money to Alaska since their annexation.  Hell most of Alaska's critical money comes in as almost a sidenote to govt. legislation.  She drasticially changed, for the better, the entire area and without stepping on people's rights.  And if someone brings up the censorship of an Alaskan library, READ THE RESPONSE FROM WASILLA ON RECORD.  Look, no book burnings.  A simple request to make a "young adults" section to get some books more mature from the "little" kids.  

Her operating budget also speaks of NOTHING but progress, and no major influence outside of regular steady growth that was as reported a capital expenditure that was used to secure a "GENERAL OBLIGATION BOND", not a bad debt in any sense of accounting.  It was an INVESTMENT, a load that Wasilla could guarantee with tax revenue as capital.  And it paid off, as you can see if you look at the record of the budget and reported incomes of Wasilla, before and after her term.

Full sources from wasilla here:  http://www.cityofwasilla.com/index.aspx?page=136

Read that before you read some crap.  I am looking at her record as governor now.  DAYUM, this lady drop kicked some issues in a good way.  I am impressed, but still not endorsing.

And since once again i am the only one who can say something nice about her, or something critical of the democrats:
She also did not habitually tap money that compares to the almost 1 million dollars per day in Senate that Obama has, which totals over 3 billion.  This is the man who attacked HER on earmarks?  c'mon.  And let's not think of the fact that you and I today paid 360 dollars to get Joe Biden to work and back home (180 first class one way).  YAY AMTRAK!

[quote]Palin also successfully pushed through a sales tax increase in Wasilla, which went to fund a $15 million sports complex. However, a land dispute over the sight of the complex led to “years of legal wrangling” and cost Wasilla almost $1.7 million, “a lot more than the roughly $125,000 the city would have paid in 1998 if it had closed a deal to buy the property outright.” Wasilla is still facing budget shortfalls from the case today.[/quote]

Sales tax and property tax is the way tax was meant to be...  not "income" tax; which amounts to paying the government to get your earned wage.

As for the complex.  BULLSHIT.  The budget of Wasilla is 30 Million dollars this year, compared to 6 million when she entered office.  The dispute with the complex could not be settled because it was a project that grew out of proportion.  They do that sometimes.  Then, they had a land issue.    From revs that are coming in from Palin's landmark work to grow the city.  They are just getting bigger and bigger.

The people voted for the 1/2 percent increase in sales tax to settle the building and this was done by city council, not the mayor.  in 2002, at the end of her second and final term.

[quote]When Palin left office in 2002, Wasilla had “racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt,” or roughly $3,000 of debt per resident. [/quote]

I am sick of people ignorant of finance "General Obligation Bonds" are NOT BAD DEBT.  Your mortgage is a form of General Obligation indebtedness.

As you can see from here, per the current mayor, the project was completed, after those hurdles "on time and under budget."  Yah, she clearly left the city strangled after "blowing it."

http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/background/story/168047.html

[quote]That's what I call 'Blowing It'...[/quote]

But you still have not read ONE official release from Alaska on her or by her, have you?

People who don't like her and the people who were afraid of growth and change.

http://www.cityofwasilla.com/index.aspx?page=136

As for Think Progress claiming to be bi-partisan, sure.,..  but totally liberal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_American_Progress


Ty, these people are scum.  These are the people who want to enforce one liberal DJ for every conservative one...  just because their radio efforts failed otherwise.

raum wrote:She also did not habitually tap money that compares to the almost 1 million dollars per day in Senate that Obama has, which totals over 3 billion.

Under Palin's leadership, Alaska this year asked for almost $300 per person in requests for pet projects from one of McCain's top adversaries: indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. That's more than any other state received, per person, from Congress for the current budget year. Other states got just $34 worth of local projects per person this year, on average, according to Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington-based watchdog group.The state government's earmark requests to Congress in her first year in office exceeded $550 million, more than $800 per resident. Palin actually reduced the state government's requests for special projects this year in the wake of President Bush's demand for a cutback in earmarks.

raum wrote:I am sick of people ignorant of finance "General Obligation Bonds" are NOT BAD DEBT. Your mortgage is a form of General Obligation indebtedness.

raum wrote:People who don't like her and the people who were afraid of growth and change.

blixa wrote:Why is balancing a budget and growing an economy(especialy in a boom time) considered such a great achievment and somehow proof that a person is fit to lead..... being good at exploiting natural resouces, or cutting spending to areas where every man and his dog knows there is money being wasted is no great achievment.

claiming that you take on big oil...when really your for them is bullshitting and it's bullshitting in a major way

Put simply a husband having his dick sucked in a legal brothel where the worker pays tax as oposed to having it sucked on a street corner by a crack whore named cookie...is still cheating on his wife

being in favour of (and claiming it's supporting them) exploiting not only your country's, but your familys greatest natural resource
(this being the social captial you find in a person who is willing to serve and die for their country)

is still fucked...no matter how long you wait for people to forget it was about oil and not democracy or how many labels on the mcdonalds menu you change....

using these things to champion yourself as a servant of the people and the "right person for the Job" is beyong bullshitting.....it points to the heart of a person