Palin

In just a couple of days, the 2008 elections will be over….finally.

Of course, that means that it will be time for the 2012 election campaign to start up….

…if it hasn’t already.

Via cafepress:

My respect level for McCain’s running mate just rose a couple of notches. Via CNN’s Political Ticker:

Wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and standing on a breezy tarmac, Palin said that if she had her way, the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee would not be flooding battleground states with automated phone calls tying Barack Obama to former radical William Ayers, as they have done over the last week. […]

"If I called all the shots, and if I could wave a magic wand," Palin said, "I would be sitting at a kitchen table with more and more Americans, talking to them about our plan to get the economy back on track and winning the war, and not having to rely on the old conventional ways of campaigning that includes those robocalls, and includes spending so much money on the television ads that, I think, is kind of draining out there in terms of Americans’ attention span.

"They get a bit irritated with just being inundated," she continued, "and you’re seeing a lot of that of course with the huge amounts of money that Barack Obama is able to spend on his ads and his robocalls also."

I suppose now that I’ve voted, my usual threat of voting against any candidate who robocalls me is ineffective.

Sometimes the simplest messages are the most potent.

Apparently this ad has been televised only once, on MSNBC, immediately after the debate last night.  I figure it merits repeating.

A full copy of the report is here.  The punchline:

For the reasons explained in section IV of this report, I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.  Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) provides

“The legislature reaffirms that each public officer holds office as a public trust, and any effort to benefit a personal or financial interest through official action is a violation of that trust.”

First, we had the “McCain Wins!” ads going out before the first debate.   Now, this:

So, who is this “Famous Person”, and why haven’t I heard of him/her?

Bill Schneider at CNN observed:

Palin’s answers do not lack confidence, they lack coherence.

I’m not sure I’d go quite that far…but I wasn’t kidding when I said we had to change the channel.

Still, I wonder how Palin is playing with “Joe Sixpack” this evening.

Can anyone hear what Governor Palin is saying? 

I could swear that she’s being drowned out by the sound of every dead grammar teacher spinning in his/her grave.

My wife just changed the channel with my blessing.  Governor Palin is coming across as better-prepared than in recent interviews…but it was getting extremely painful for us to listen to her.

Yet another indication of how low expectations have been set for Governor Palin, via MSNBC:

If she doesn’t run off the stage crying, she wins.

For all those teetotalers who have been left out by debate/speech drinking games….

CNN apparently sent a reporter to Little Diomede, the Alaskan island where you can actually see Russia from your house.  Some rather amusing trivia was uncovered:

We were curious if Sarah Palin has ever visited this island. According to the natives, the answer is no.

As a matter of fact, no Alaska governor in the state’s nearly 50 year history has ever visited the remote outpost that still has little running water. We were curious what the Little Diomeders thought about Palin’s claim of foreign policy experience because of the proximity of Siberia. Interestingly, many of these Alaskans had no idea who Sarah Palin was! It turns out they have no TV on the island, and therefore, many don’t follow the news.

The island’s mayor has heard of her though. No American mayor resides in a city closer to Russia than Andrew Milligrock, and he says being two miles from Russia doesn’t give him any foreign policy expertise.

Rather than dance around her lack of foreign policy experience, shouldn’t Sarah Palin instead be promoting her executive and reform credentials?