Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin, the teenage daughter of Gov. Sarah Palin, have broken off their engagement, he said Wednesday, about 2 1/2 months after the couple had a baby. Johnston, 19, told The Associated Press that he and 18-year-old Bristol Palin mutually decided "a while ago" to end their relationship. He declined to elaborate as he stood outside his family's home in Wasilla, about 40 miles north of Anchorage.
They decided "awhile" ago, huh? If it wasn't during Palin's failed bid for VP, I assume the exposure didn't help much either. Of course, Drudge doesn't mention it and I bet that O'Reilly won't bring it up either because then he'd have to eat his own words.
As I mentioned during the campaign, what if it was Obama's daughter who was unwed, pregnant and now and single mother? Would the right leave it alone?
That Couric interview reminds me of the Mary Poppins bag.
She reads all of them, huh? I guess that's where she got the information that people think Alaska is a foreign country. Couric is getting fed up with her dancing as well.
Apparently, it wouldn't be fair if the moderators asked too many foreign policy questions. Poor Sarah.
Personally, I don't think Palin has a strong area or a "fortay", so I'm fine with everything. She's getting training this week, so expect more one-liners than anything else.
According to McCain/Palin, we can't listen to people's "verbage" or words just because someone is "sticking a microphone [in] while conversations are being held."
"She would not…she understands and has stated repeatedly that we're not going to do anything except in America's national security interest," McCain told ABC's George Stephanopoulos of Palin. "In all due respect, people going around and… sticking a microphone while conversations are being held, and then all of a sudden that's—that's a person's position… This is a free country, but I don't think most Americans think that that's a definitve policy statement made by Governor Palin."
While McCain's Health Insurance policy doesn't extend much beyond SPF, at least he is concerned about skin cancer. Palin prefers to be injected with it...
"The governor did have a tanning bed put in the Governor's Mansion," Roger Wetherell, chief communications officer of Alaska's Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, confirmed to this newspaper. "It was done shortly after she took office [in early 2007] and moved into the mansion."
Not a big deal in the least, but interesting conflict of interests.
Nate over at 538 reminds us to forget about Palin and focus on McCain.
"The Sarah Palin Phenomenon is not about facts – it’s about an emotional gut reaction to someone who has charisma and reflects something essentially common and real about themselves."
"Well, I think that she looked a bit like her. I think that, of course, the portrait was very dismissive of the substance of Sarah Palin, and so in that sense, they were defining Hillary Clinton as very substantive, and Sarah Palin as totally superficial. I think that continues the line of argument that is disrespectful in the extreme, and yes, I would say, sexist in the sense that just because Sarah Palin has different views than Hillary Clinton does not mean that she lacks substance. She has a lot of substance."
When Baptist ministers are scared of her, then you know we have a problem.
"She scares me," said Bess. "She's Jerry Falwell with a pretty face.
"At this point, people in this country don't grasp what this person is all about. The key to understanding Sarah Palin is understanding her radical theology."
Agreed. But this is what really scares me:
"Things got very intense around here in the '90s -- the culture war was very hot here," Bess said. "The evangelicals were trying to take over the valley. They took over the school board, the community hospital board, even the local electric utility. And Sarah Palin was in the direct center of all these culture battles, along with the churches she belonged to."
It's easy to keep lying when no one is allowed to ask you questions.
"More than 40 million people tuned in last week to listen to the speech from Palin, the 44-year-old, first-term governor whom McCain announced as his surprise vice presidential pick just days before. Since then, that basic script is all anyone has heard from her publicly, and her only interaction with the media was a brief conversation with a small group of reporters on her plane Monday _ off the record at her handlers' insistence.
Associated Press reporters were not on the plane, but an aide told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said."
Lowering expectations in their game. If no one hears from her until the debate and then she says something that makes sense, they will call it a home run. McCain campaign manager Rick Davis says that Palin will "agree to an interview when we think it's time and when she feels comfortable doing it."
Obama uses a very common analogy and McCain whines.
"You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still going to stink after eight years."
In an absurd attempt to make this a gender issue, the McCain camp shows what they really think of Palin.
"McCain's campaign immediately organized a telephone conference call in response and called on Obama to apologize for calling Palin a pig. Obama's campaign said he wasn't referring to Palin; he had been talking about McCain immediately before the lipstick comment."
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2008 the average rate of Forcible Rape in the United States in 2005 was 32 per 100,000 population. 20 out of 31 Conservative States had a higher than average rate of Forcible Rape (65% of Conservative States).
And Palin is super conservative. Does that mean super high forcible rape rate? Yep.
The highest rate of Forcible Rape in the country is found in Alaska with 81 per 100,000 population. The lowest rate of Forcible Rape in the country is found in New Jersey with 14 per 100,000 population.
I'm confused though. Jersey people are super ugly, so they don't rape each other. It makes sense, but Alaskans are equally as ugly and they do rape each other.
"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office, charging a "per diem" allowance intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business."
This is pretty hypocritical since she claimed that she didn't want to taxpayers to be footing the bill for her live-in chef.
While I was at it, I got rid of a few things in the governor's office that I didn't believe our citizens should have to pay for," she said to loud applause.
My guess is that Todd didn't like the idea of another man living in his house that might be more of a secessionist than he was. I don't blame him though. Sarah has a thing for secession. The more the merrier.
Andrew Breitbart at RealClearPolitics.com thinks that the Oprah show is a public forum where the audience should decide who gets to appear on the show.
'Mrs. Palin is history in a dress. And her script is straight out of Hollywood - like those teen movies with the cliched ending featuring the female valedictorian delivering the speech of a lifetime projecting a bold and transformative future with an independent-minded woman in charge."
Besides the fact that this guy offers no basis for his claim that her viewers want to see more of Palin (is that possible?) and is ignoring the fact the Palin is a more of a rightwing nut-job than a self-proclamied reformer and independent woman, he decides to slam Oprah because she doesn't want to give Palin the coverage.
"Yet Oprah Winfrey, the high priestess of the female empowerment movement and America's most adored television host, denies her massive and loyal audience's most obvious wishes because of her single-minded drive to put Barack Obama in the White House."
Obvious wishes? Right. He also blames Oprah for Hillary not getting the nod.
Thanks Palin. You're unfounded red-meat speech gave Obama a record day. Whoops!
Barack Obama's campaign for president has raised $10 million since Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin spoke Wednesday night, the campaign announced, calling it a "one-day record."
Palin, the governor of Alaska, launched harsh attacks on Obama, accusing him of being two-faced and a political lightweight with no significant legislative accomplishments.
"Coverage of the Palin attacks on the news this evening just pushed us over $10 million," Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in an e-mail to reporters Wednesday night.
How much did she raise for her ticket?
The Republican Party announced earlier in the day it had raised $1 million in the wake of Palin's speech.
Roger Simon (of the AP believe it or nto) says it the best...
On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry. On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry. We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked.
We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency?
We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice?
Bad questions. Bad media. Bad.
It is not our job to ask questions. Or it shouldn’t be. To hear from the pols at the Republican National Convention this week, our job is to endorse and support the decisions of the pols.
Sarah Palin hit the nail on the head Wednesday night (and several in the audience wish she had hit some reporters on the head instead) when she said: “I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly, these past few days, that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.”
But where did we go wrong with Sarah Palin? Let me count the ways:
First, we should have stuck to the warm, human interest stuff like how she likes mooseburgers and hit an important free throw at her high school basketball tournament even though she had a stress fracture.
Second, we should have stuck to the press release stuff like how she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (after she supported it).
Third, we should never have strayed into the other stuff. Like when The Washington Post recently wrote: “Palin is under investigation by a bipartisan state legislative body. … Palin had promised to cooperate with the legislative inquiry, but this week she hired a lawyer to fight to move the case to the jurisdiction of the state personnel board, which Palin appoints.”
Why go there? What trees does that plant?
Fourth, we should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul.
Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.”
Fifth, we should stop reporting on the families of the candidates. Unless the candidates want us to.
Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq.
Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried.
Sarah Palin thinks that one is good for her campaign and one is not, and that the media should report only on what is good for her campaign. That is our job, and that is our duty. If that is not actually in the Constitution, it should be. (And someday may be.)
The official theme of the convention’s third day was “prosperity,” but the unofficial theme was “the media are really, really awful.”
Even Mike Huckabee, who campaigned for president this year by saying “I am a conservative, but I am not mad at anybody,” discovered Wednesday night that he is mad at somebody.
“I’d like to thank the elite media for doing something,” Huckabee said, “that, quite frankly, I didn’t think could be done: unify the Republican party and all of America in support of John McCain and Sarah Palin.”
And could that be the real point of the attacks on the media? To unify the Republican Party?
No, that is simply the cynical, media view.
Though as Lily Tomlin says, “No matter how cynical I get, it’s just never enough to keep up.”
I couldn’t resist that. For which I am sorry
I don't like quoting the entire article, but it was too good. I know the Right has no idea what journalism is and that's why the constantly call it "liberal" when it reports something that is critical of the Right, but what were they expecting the public to do?
There is a tendency in the media to kick ourselves, cringe and withdraw, when we are criticized. But I hope my colleagues stand strong in this case: it is important for the public to know that Palin raised taxes as governor, supported the Bridge to Nowhere before she opposed it, pursued pork-barrel projects as mayor, tried to ban books at the local library and thinks the war in Iraq is "a task from God." The attempts by the McCain campaign to bully us into not reporting such things are not only stupidly aggressive, but unprofessional in the extreme.
Maybe the Media won't eat it up.
He's right. They tried to make it "Poor Sarah", but they lost that line tonight.
The thing that is funny about this whole thing is that McCain has always been the Media Darling. They loved him UNTIL he sold himself out. And now he has sold them out. He's biting the hands that fed him and I doubt the coverage is going to get better.
As I said in my live-blog post, she crossed the line when she attacked community organizers and Roland hits it on the head...for once.
And even the GOP celeb, Ben Stein is worried...
Here is her line by the way,
"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a "community organizer," except that you have actual responsibilities. "
She enters to raucous applause. Starts with praising McCain about his courage. Says she wants McCain to be the CIC of her son. I guess she doesn't mind that he will be deployed for four solid years if McCain wins.
Family time. She introduces her family. Boyfriend looks uncomfortable. I don't blame him. Special needs kids are the best. She will fight for you. I guess that doesn't mean health care though. Todd involved in Big Oil. For some reason, she keeps on talking about his snow mobile racing. That qualifies her. She calls him "her guy". She's trying to make herself appear more motherly.
She talks about people who grow food and fight for our country are more proud than those who don't. I guess she's not proud. She's just your average hockey mom. Makes a ridiculous joke about a pit pull and moms. They keep on saying the Obama is looking down on her time as a mayor. She insults community organizers. Looks like she lost that vote. She's whining about Obama's "guns" comment.
If she doesn't change her speech, she's not going to appeal to anyone, but herself. The goons start chanting "NBC! NBC! NBC!". She's saying suck it, Media!!! Whoops. Maybe she forgot that the media sets the tone of the election. She sounds like she is a supporter of the GOP, not a candidate.
This speech was supposed to be her attempt to show her presidential qualities. This is a joke. One liners don't sit well with leaner's. She is focusing on all the issues that have already been debunked as a myth. This sounds a lot like Cindy McCain's speech.
Again, she said the "Thanks, but no thanks" line. Again, debunked. She's going on and on about oil. Not a good move. Her speech writer sucks. It's only been ten minutes and she saying the same thing over and over again.
This speech will do nothing. No numbers will move. What a bore. She starts lying about Obama now. Lies, lies, lies.... She makes a Moses joke. They have yet to mention the economy. Only McCain is good, I'm a mom, oil is good and Iraq is heaven. She lies about Obama's tax plan. That will be an easy fix. Her speech is fading. She tries to insult Reid. It flopped. Her maverick lined flopped too.
I can't believe how many shots she is taking at Obama and then leaving an awkward pause for applaud. She goes back to McCain's POW status. He was in war, so elect him. The POW thing flopped as well. She's speaking very abstractly now. It's above the average GOP head.
I can wrap this up. Nothing is being said. She didn't prove a thing to anybody. She's talked for 20 minutes about nothing. She went with the typical GOP line of attack: liberals are bad, media is bad, we are good. This might be well a received speech, but did not calm any of the storm that she brought to the ticket.
The crowd loves it. The Media will praise it, but nothing was done to combat her issues.
Old Man McCain crept on the stage. I guess he was woken up from his nap. The GOP cheerleaders love him. He gave Palin an odd robot hug. They sat up there for too long.
Palin will address the nation tonight amidst serious controversy. She will give a "stellar performance" tonight no doubt, but it will be an empty plea to change the story from the audacity of her candidacy. McCain advisor, Rick Davis, said it will be a very "masculine" speech. Only the GOP would do that to its first female candidate. The goal is going to be make her into more of a mom who Biden should treat differently because of that fact. He should be more "gentle". This whole thing is a charade and Palin is too much of a creation of the GOP that it is bound to fail. In the meantime, Obama is sticking to the issues and cruising at 50%.
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