Palin’s Geography Leaker Comes Forth

I didn’t want to believe it was true, but when the reports emerged that during her debate prep Governor Palin didn’t know the members of NAFTA (aka, the North American Free Trade Agreement), or that the countries in Africa were actually countries and not just a part of a gigantic country named “Africa”, I thought, “Come on.”

It just wasn’t serious.

So when Governor Palin started calling the anonymous leakers a bunch of jerks and cowards, that was probably the end of it.

Only – the leaker came forward. Martin Eisenstadt has revealed himself as one of Sarah Palin’s debate prep workers who found her lack of knowledge – disturbing:

As you know, I was one of the foreign policy advisers on the McCain campaign who worked with Randy Scheunemann to help prep Sarah on her debate with Joe Biden. Did we outright give her a geography quiz when we started the prep? No, of course not. But yes, in the context of the prep, it slowly became apparent that her grasp of basic geo-political knowledge had major gaps. Could she have passed a multiple choice test about South Africa or NAFTA. Probably. But it was clear that she simply didn’t have the ease of knowledge that we come to expect from a major party political candidate. Other slights came up, too: Not knowing the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas. Or the difference between the Shiites and Suni. Or when it came to international terrorist organizations, knowing that the IRA was in Northern Ireland, and ETA in Spain.

Oh – you know what? It’s on.

Palin spent more money on clothes than originally claimed

If things looked a little tense between McCain and Palin, it may be because Palin (like the “bridge to Nowhere” that she championed then pretended to reject) spent a lot more money than she was suppose to.

According to a Newsweek article coming out tomorrow, Palin went on a shopping binge, buying clothes for her and her entire family on the McCain budget.

And they wanted to trust this woman with the national budget.

Palin vows to end political pettiness

Governor Sarah Palin is promising to end the environment of pettiness and partisanship.

So does that mean:

• She’ll stop calling people socialists because they want to increase taxes on the richest by 5%?
• Palin won’t refer to her opponents as people who “pal around with terrorists”?
• Palin will refuse to take her opponents statements out of context for political points?

No, really, I’m curious, Governor. Can you show through your actions how you’re going to be less petty and partisan in the future?

We’re all ears.

Palin’s request to address McCain supporters was vetoed

While Ms. Palin may think of herself as the face of the future of the Republican party, it seems for now, McCain and his advisers don’t want her taking the stage yet:

[Steve] Schmidt went so far last night as to “veto” Palin’s request to offer a few words to the crowd after McCain conceded the election. Politco’s Mike Allen reports on a forthcoming Newsweek article, “Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.”

Personally, I want to see her run in 2012. I’ll be very curious to see how she handles against Romney/Huckabee – and watch the sparks fly.

How would Palin and McCain do against each other?

What if Governor Palin had been in the primaries, and had to debate John McCain for the nomination? Would history have changed any?

We’ll never know – but it might have looked something like this mock McCain versus Palin debate:

So what is it about Palin that draw’s people?

McClatchy’s Erika Bolstad looks at the phenomenon that is Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s ability to draw large crowds of people. Who are these people who decided they want to listen to her? Among the majority of Americans, Palins negatives are greater than her positives – and yet people still come.

Why? Is it just that she’s attractive, or plays the “mean girl” we all knew in high school well? Is it shared religious value? Ms. Bolstad goes through each of the reasons – and I’m not sure that I’m sure I really get it myself.

Palin: Taking quotes out of context is fun! Let’s lie about Obama’s plan on coal!

Suppose I said “I will start charging my daughter rent if she decides to let her boyfriend sleep in her room. If she wants to have a boyfriend that way, she’ll probably go bankrupt.”

Odds are, if my daughter said “My dad says if I have a boyfriend he’ll make me go bankrupt,” you’d roll your eyes so hard at her you’d be able to see your brain.

So when Senator Obama said that under his cap and trade system, old fashioned coal plants would go bankrupt. If coal wanted to be viable, they’d have to be clean coal, you can imagine what the Governor Palin response was:

Listen to Barack Obama’s plans to bankrupt the coal industry.

Here’s the original quote from Senator Obama:

I voted against the Clear Skies Bill. In fact, I was the deciding vote — despite the fact that I’m a coal state and that half my state thought that I had thoroughly betrayed them. Because I think clean air is critical and global warming is critical.

But this notion of no coal, I think, is an illusion. Because the fact of the matter is, is that right now we are getting a lot of our energy from coal. And China is building a coal-powered plant once a week. So what we have to do then is figure out how can we use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon. And how can we sequester that carbon and capture it. If we can’t, then we’re gonna still be working on alternatives.

But … let me sort of describe my overall policy. What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade policy in place that is as aggressive if not more aggressive than anyone out there. I was the first call for 100 percent auction on the cap and trade system. Which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases that was emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants are being built, they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted. That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel, and other alternative energy approaches. The only thing that I’ve said with respect to coal — I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter, as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it, that I think is the right approach. The same with respect to nuclear. Right now, we don’t know how to store nuclear waste wisely and we don’t know how to deal with some of the safety issues that remain. And so it’s wildly expensive to pursue nuclear energy. But I tell you what, if we could figure out how to store it safely, then I think most of us would say that might be a pretty good deal.

The point is, if we set rigorous standards for the allowable emissions, then we can allow the market to determine and technology and entrepreneurs to pursue, what the best approach is to take, as opposed to us saying at the outset, here are the winners that we’re picking and maybe we pick wrong and maybe we pick right.

So, once again, stay classy Governor Palin by misquoting someone. Especially when the McCain ticket supports the same Cap and Trade policy:

John McCain Proposes A Cap-And-Trade System That Would Set Limits On Greenhouse Gas Emissions While Encouraging The Development Of Low-Cost Compliance Options. A climate cap-and-trade mechanism would set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and allow entities to buy and sell rights to emit, similar to the successful acid rain trading program of the early 1990s. The key feature of this mechanism is that it allows the market to decide and encourage the lowest-cost compliance options.

Hm. Cap and trade system that would companies limit how much carbon they emit, and let them buy up offsets – and if they emit too much carbon, they could potentially go bankrupt trying to buy up the offsets to make up for it.

Palin *still* getting VP job description wrong

Seriously – how many times can Governor Palin not know what the Vice-President does?

Look – the VP doesn’t have any executive rights. They only thing they do is:
1. Vote in the Senate if there’s a tie.
2. Replace the President if he chokes.

The Vice-President doesn’t take charge of anything. Ever.

Palin gets Punked. Hard.

Four days of prep work. Six minutes of video.

Getting the the potential Vice-President of the United States to think she was in an interview with French President Nicolas Sarkozy?

Priceless.

Not only does Governor Palin believe she’s speaking with Sarkozy, she doesn’t seem to notice when he gets the name of the Prime Minister of Canada wrong, or that he thinks the Hustler movie “Nailin’ Palin” is a documentary. (No, I’m not going to link to that one – you can look it up yourself.

Here’s the audio, in all of its glory:

I can’t defend Palin any more – she gets the first amendment wrong

Pop quiz, hot shots. The first amendment does what in regard to free speech?

If you answered “doesn’t allow the government to pass laws restricting it”, you’d be right. If you’re Sarah Palin, you think that it means that the press can’t call your attacks negative when they’re wrong:

“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”

No. No – I’m sorry, but the first amendment doesn’t mean the press has to not attack you for saying things. It means that anybody can say or write whatever the hell they want and you can’t say boo about it, Governor Palin. The 1st amendment says they can critisize you, they can disagree with you, they can call you a saint, a liar, an angel, and an idiot and you have to just suck it up and stop whining.

So sorry, Governor Palin. Pointing out that your attacks on someone is an attack isn’t violating your constitutional rights. You saying it is, though, just proves you’re not qualified for the office you seek.