VPILF

[Kest]

• • • • • DENIAL
    You keep posting this shit, we'll keep making fun of it.

[White Warlock]

What? from some liberal nuts like yourself? I've watched brief snippets of her interview. I doubt there was anything needed checking. They asked for her opinions from everything Ive seen so far.

You do know what facts are, right? Facts are not 'opinions,' but facts. She based "most" of her comments on false notions, misinformation, ignorance, not facts. Facts are indisputable, ignorance is indisputable... and denial is bliss... isn't it Dan?

[Lusipher]

I've watched only snippets of the interview. I dont see anything so far that shes said that isnt based on her opinions. She hasnt had to present any facts to the questions that shes been asked so far. Once I see the whole interview then Ill answer your question.

[Mulu]

I've watched only snippets of the interview.

So as usual your opinion is based on ignorance.

Watch the whole thing, and the fact checking commentary. It may enlighten you.

Then find out more about your presidential candidate John McCain. I suspect I know a great deal more about him than you do. If nothing else, watch the movie "Why We Fight" and listen just to John McCain. He has some very interesting things to say about war. If you really want to vote for him, you should at least have some clue as to who you are voting for. After learning about McCain and Palin you may still want to vote for them, but at least you'll be an informed voter instead of some mindless Fox News drone.

And you'll have something interesting to say here.

[Lusipher]

The interview wasnt released until last night. Havent had a chance yet to look at it. I will, though.

[White Warlock]

This is politics Whitey, never let the truth get in the way of a good jab at the guys you dont like

Bah!

[ç i p h é r]

Wow. You guys are STILL talking about Gov. Palin? Sheesh, this is an epic level of desperation.

Anyway, onto my impressions of the interview.

About the question of her experience, she handled it ok, but I would have been impressed if she simply said "Of course I believe I'm experienced enough, Charlie! That's why I'm here." Next question.

About her response to the Georgia question, it was spot on. You honor your agreement to defend your allies or it's not worth the paper you signed it on. Obviously, Mr. Gibson feels differently given how he phrased the question. Boo-hoo.

About global warming, I appreciated that she wanted to focus on how we can address climate change rather than debate whether or not it's human-caused. I would have been impressed if she stood her ground and not allowed Mr. Gibson to try to paint her into one corner or another.

About the issue of a nuclear armed Iran, she handled it ok, but I would have been impressed if she said that it wouldn't be appropriate to talk about what our actual response would be to some overly trivialized hypothetical situation presented by some reporter. She did say that war would be the last option, and she could have underscored that point by reminding America that both she and Senator McCain have children serving in the military (a total of 3 in fact).

About the Bush doctrine, I think she handled that question poorly initially, but she did say that she believed America should do anything in its power to prevent an attack it believed was imminent, on itself, its allies, or its interest. It's the right answer, even if she fumbled the initial response.

About the articles of impeachment, congress approved the war. So, I hope you're willing to recall Congress as well for their involvement (actually, this sounds pretty good to me and probably 91% of America - they have a 9% approval rating for a reason). Unless of course, you have actual evidence that Bush fabricated all the intelligence he cited and willfully mislead America? We've been over this countless times before. Had such evidence existed, do you honestly believe Bush wouldn't be impeached? Get over this already.

Overall, I think she did fine considering she's had just 2 weeks to prepare to address national issues. To put things into perspective, Obama has had almost 2 years of preparation and he still fumbles questions now and again. (See the recent Saddleback debate, for example.) But the difference is, Obama is the Democratic nominee for President.

Oh, and on a positive note for transatlantic relations, I absolutely agree with your assessment Veilan!

[Vaelahr]

About the Bush doctrine, I think she handled that question poorly initially, but she did say that she believed America should do anything in its power to prevent an attack it believed was imminent, on itself, its allies, or its interest. It's the right answer, even if she fumbled the initial response.

I found this article to be an interesting supplement. That last paragraph is quite accurate methinks.

Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of `anticipatory self-defense.'" -- New York Times, Sept. 12

WASHINGTON -- Informed her? Rubbish.

The Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today.

He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?"

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, he grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of The Weekly Standard titled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to Congress nine days later, Bush declared: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush Doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq War was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of pre-emptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.

It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of Bush foreign policy and the one that most distinctively defines it: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden ... to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.

If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about Bush's grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda.

Not the Gibson doctrine of pre-emption.

Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.

Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.

Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines, which came out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.

Such is not the case with the Bush doctrine.

Yes, Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the phenom who presumes to play on their stage.

[ç i p h é r]

Precious.

[White Warlock]

Actually, Krauthammer is overstating. The Bush Doctrine, which is widely held to be the National Security Strategy of the United States presented on September 17, 2002, holds to many facets, but the most controversial, and thus the most "out of step" with what this Nation has been doing over the past 50 years, is that of preemptive war and military preeminence. Where previously the U.S. was holding to the cold-war doctrine of deterrence, it has since moved to the proactive approach that i like to refer to as, "Act Now, Think Later."

The National Security Strategy was updated in 2006 and is available here, for those who wish to peruse it -- http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/ -- it is essentially the same, but the focus of 'presentation' has been placed on the notion of supporting democracy on an international scale.



On a different point, I wanted to make clear that I am not for or against any candidate. I an not blue, nor red. I, like many others here, look at the facts... and with those facts we determine the most honest, the most respectable, and the most qualified for the tasks set before them. As it is, McCain and Palin have presented by far the most factually inaccurate information (most especially in their television ads)... and thus my reason for participating in these discussions.

For example, Palin (and McCain) stated Alaska produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy. This is factually inaccurate. Alaska produces only 3.5%. That's a rather belligerent factual misrepresentation on something she "should" be knowledgeable about, considering her role in Alaska before becoming Governor.

[White Warlock]

Precious.

Hi Cipher. Nice to see you about.

Back to the topic.

Actually, it's not precious. That Mr. Gibson provided only one prominent part (the point of contention, the issue of major controversy) of the Bush Doctrine does not dismiss the fact Palin didn't know "anything" about the Bush Doctrine. In fact, when Mr. Gibson presented his one definition for it, she had in front of her a grand opening to 'correct" Mr. Gibson by presenting all aspects of the Bush Doctrine, as it is declared in the U.S. National Security Strategy -- http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss/2006/ .

The fact Palin did not do so, as well as the rambling she posed prior to Mr. Gibson's "information," is ample evidence she is/was quite "ignorant" of something she should have been quite familiar with.

One more thing --- Do you guys honestly believe a vice-presidential candidate should be treated with kid's gloves? Oh, but she's a woman!

[Mulu]

How Palin Governs
Apparently, a lot like Bush Jr., with cronyism and vindictiveness.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages.
/
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
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Interviews show that Ms. Palin runs an administration that puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy.
/
In Wasilla, a builder said he complained to Mayor Palin when the city attorney put a stop-work order on his housing project. She responded, he said, by engineering the attorney’s firing.
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Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska professor, sought the e-mail messages of state scientists who had examined the effect of global warming on polar bears. (Ms. Palin said the scientists had found no ill effects, and she has sued the federal government to block the listing of the bears as endangered.) An administration official told Mr. Steiner that his request would cost $468,784 to process.

When Mr. Steiner finally obtained the e-mail messages — through a federal records request — he discovered that state scientists had in fact agreed that the bears were in danger, records show.
/
The administration’s e-mail correspondence reveals a siege-like atmosphere. Top aides keep score, demean enemies and gloat over successes. Even some who helped engineer her rise have felt her wrath.

Dan Fagan, a prominent conservative radio host and longtime friend of Ms. Palin, urged his listeners to vote for her in 2006. But when he took her to task for raising taxes on oil companies, he said, he found himself branded a “hater.”

It is part of a pattern, Mr. Fagan said, in which Ms. Palin characterizes critics as “bad people who are anti-Alaska.”

It goes on and on. A good and well researched read.

[ç i p h é r]

Do you really think the NY Times, which has publicly endorsed Obama, has any credibility in reporting honestly and, more importantly, fairly in this election? Has it published any articles on Obama along the same vein (ie how would Obama govern), or is that another one of the things that have been overlooked because he has no record of running anything? I've little interest in reading propaganda.

Hi WW. No, a VP candidate should not be treated with kid gloves, but then, neither should a Presidential candidate. I think everyone should be treated equally, and certainly fairly. Do you believe that's been the case?

Also, it doesn't take great insight to recognize that Gibson had an agenda in that interview just like it didn't take great insight to recognize that Bill O had one in his interview with Obama. Simply pay attention to the body language, and more importantly, the way in which questions are phrased. Truth is, I think both candidates handled themselves pretty well, all things considered.

Given how bad things have gotten, if I were either campaign, I would not agree to conduct any interviews. I'd just wait for the debates and let the public decide on the issues.

[Mulu]

Do you really think the NY Times, which has publicly endorsed Obama, has any credibility in reporting honestly and, more importantly, fairly in this election?

Ignore the opinions, read the facts. They are quite specific. I had already heard about the polar bear thing. Do you doubt she hired classmates and friends into government?

Well here, I'll make it so you don't have to follow a dirty NYT link.

The mayor quickly fired the town’s museum director, John Cooper. Later, she sent an aide to the museum to talk to the three remaining employees. “He told us they only wanted two,” recalled Esther West, one of the three, “and we had to pick who was going to be laid off.” The three quit as one.

In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters.

The new mayor also tended carefully to her evangelical base. She appointed a pastor to the town planning board. And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

“People would bring books back censored,” recalled former Mayor John Stein, Ms. Palin’s predecessor. “Pages would get marked up or torn out.”

I have to admit I've seen that in libraries myself. I really hate conservatives who damage books. How would they feel if I started blacking out bibles?

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

Oh, and Cipher, it's not all negative.

Ms. Palin discovered that the state Republican leader, Randy Ruedrich, a commission member, was conducting party business on state time and favoring regulated companies. When Mr. Murkowski failed to act on her complaints, she quit and went public.

The Republican establishment shunned her. But her break with the gentlemen’s club of oil producers and political power catapulted her into the public eye.

“She was honest and forthright,” said Jay Kerttula, a former Democratic state senator from Palmer.

And some is just showing that she's a politician.

In the middle of the primary, a conservative columnist in the state, Paul Jenkins, unearthed e-mail messages showing that Ms. Palin had conducted campaign business from the mayor’s office. Ms. Palin handled the crisis with a street fighter’s guile.

“I told her it looks like she did the same thing that Randy Ruedrich did,” Mr. Jenkins recalled. “And she said, ‘Yeah, what I did was wrong.’ ”

Mr. Jenkins hung up and decided to forgo writing about it. His phone rang soon after.

Mr. Jenkins said a reporter from Fairbanks, reading from a Palin news release, demanded to know why he was “smearing” her. “Now I look at her and think: ‘Man, you’re slick,’ ” he said.
/
Not deeply versed in policy, Ms. Palin skipped some candidate forums; at others, she flipped through hand-written, color-coded index cards strategically placed behind her nameplate.

Before one forum, Mr. Halcro said he saw aides shovel reports at Ms. Palin as she crammed. Her showman’s instincts rarely failed. She put the pile of reports on the lectern. Asked what she would do about health care policy, she patted the stack and said she would find an answer in the pile of solutions.

Then there is the cronyism.

As she assembled her cabinet and made other state appointments, those with insider credentials were now on the outs. But a new pattern became clear. She surrounded herself with people she has known since grade school and members of her church.
/
Ms. Palin chose Talis Colberg, a borough assemblyman from the Matanuska valley, as her attorney general, provoking a bewildered question from the legal community: “Who?” Mr. Colberg, who did not return calls, moved from a one-room building in the valley to one of the most powerful offices in the state, supervising some 500 people.

“I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’ ” said a family friend, Kathy Wells. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’ ”
/
The Wasilla High School yearbook archive now doubles as a veritable directory of state government. Ms. Palin appointed Mr. Bitney, her former junior high school band-mate, as her legislative director and chose another classmate, Joe Austerman, to manage the economic development office for $82,908 a year. Mr. Austerman had established an Alaska franchise for Mailboxes Etc.

Apparently she's both Bush and Cheney!! (Cheney being very secretive)

While Ms. Palin took office promising a more open government, her administration has battled to keep information secret. Her inner circle discussed the benefit of using private e-mail addresses. An assistant told her it appeared that such e-mail messages sent to a private address on a “personal device” like a BlackBerry “would be confidential and not subject to subpoena.”

Ms. Palin and aides use their private e-mail addresses for state business. A campaign spokesman said the governor copied e-mail messages to her state account “when there was significant state business.”

On Feb. 7, Frank Bailey, a high-level aide, wrote to Ms. Palin’s state e-mail address to discuss appointments. Another aide fired back: “Frank, this is not the governor’s personal account.”

Mr. Bailey responded: “Whoops~!”

And this one is specifically for Lusipher, who just can't seem to get over Obama voting "present." At least he was present.

Many lawmakers contend that Ms. Palin is overly reliant on a small inner circle that leaves her isolated. Democrats and Republicans alike describe her as often missing in action. Since taking office in 2007, Ms. Palin has spent 312 nights at her Wasilla home, some 600 miles to the north of the governor’s mansion in Juneau, records show.

During the last legislative session, some lawmakers became so frustrated with her absences that they took to wearing “Where’s Sarah?” pins.
/
At an Alaska Municipal League gathering in Juneau in January, mayors across the political spectrum swapped stories of the governor’s remoteness. How many of you, someone asked, have tried to meet with her? Every hand went up, recalled Mayor Fred Shields of Haines Borough. And how many met with her? Just a few hands rose. Ms. Palin soon walked in, delivered a few remarks and left for an anti-abortion rally.

Oh yeah, she's qualified to govern the country....

[ç i p h é r]

So are there actually any facts in the article? There is just one instance where a "record" was even mentioned in your quotes, but no source(s) provided. Virtually everything you've quoted are personal accounts/recollections, which conveniently cannot be proven or disproven. Is that it?

Has the NY Times done any investigative reporting on Obama's background, associations, and record? If the answer is no, I think that's all I really need to know about what gets published by the NY Times. I couldn't find anything similar doing a simple keyword search on their website, but I didn't try to be exhaustive. I suspect I know the answer already...