Palin's Speech

[symbiosis 0]

... it was exactly what the party wanted to hear. She had more than a few zingers, which is the kind of red meat that the GOP laps up. Not much substance, however.

The fact remains that she's a kook. More than inexperienced, she is dangerous. She shows a penchant for abusing her office, doesn't understand the line between church and state (let alone the wall) and has denied the science of evolution and climate change.

[reeses16 8]

I was driving when her speech was given. I caught part of it on the radio and read the transcript last night. Some of the things she said, particularly about Obama, were false. Just because you say something doesn't make it true.

Fact check:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_.../cvn_fact_check

Edited September 4, 2008 by reeses16

[Ban Hammer 13,340]

I was driving when her speech was given. I caught part of it on the radio and read the transcript last night. Some of the things she said, particularly about Obama, were false. Just because you say something doesn't make it true.

Fact check:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_.../cvn_fact_check

broken link.........so much for that fact check

[almaty 19]

(CNN) -- Democrats accused Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin of mirroring "divisive" attacks by President Bush Wednesday night and said showed she wasn't qualified to be on the ticket.

Barack Obama's campaign said Sarah Palin's speech sounded just like George W. Bush.

"The speech that [Alaska] Gov. Palin made was well delivered, but it was written by George Bush's speechwriter and sounds exactly like the same divisive, partisan attacks we've heard from George Bush for the last eight years," said Bill Burton, the campaign spokesman for Sen. Barack Obama.

"If Gov. Palin and John McCain want to define 'change' as voting with George Bush 90 percent of the time, that's their choice, but we don't think the American people are ready to take a 10 percent chance on change." Watch Palin attack Obama's record »

In her speech, Palin drew large applause for attacking Obama for writing two memoirs, but no major laws or reforms.

Robert Gibbs, an Obama campaign senior adviser, said that like Joe Lieberman's speech last night, Palin was wrong.

"I hope if she continues that argument that she'll get her facts straight," Gibbs said.

Gibbs said Obama had worked on strong ethics reform in the state and U.S. legislatures.

In her speech, Palin highlighted her ethics reforms in Alaska as proof she was qualified for the job. iReport.com: I touched Obama's "styrofoam" columns

Don't Miss

Palin blasts Obama as unfit to lead

Read Palin's full speech

"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," Palin said. "That luxury jet was over the top. I put it on eBay."

Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who served as national co-Chair for Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign, said those words showed Palin's lack of qualifications. Watch Democrats weigh in on Palin's speech »

"I thought [her speech] was a tirade of attacks and it was really surprising that the case that Gov. Palin made for her candidacy for vice president is her experience in negotiating the sale of her state's plane on eBay," she said. If, God forbid, anything happens to John McCain, then we are in for a scary proposition."

Kiki McLean, who served as senior adviser to Clinton's campaign, called most of the jabs "great political theater."

McClean, Gibbs and Wasserman Schultz all said that for the second night in a row, the slams against the Democrats were merely a distraction from the fact that nobody has offered detailed plans on the issues Americans care most about.

"For the second night in a row we have yet to see what John McCain will do to get this economy on track, create more jobs," Gibbs said. "That's what Americans want to hear."

Palin also took a swing at Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of the "current do-nothing Senate" for comments he made about McCain.

"[Reid] said, 'I can't stand John McCain,' " Palin said. "Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps no accolade we hear this week is better proof that we've chosen the right man. Clearly what the majority leader was driving at is that he can't stand up to John McCain."

Reid's spokesman Jim Manley fired back, calling Palin's remarks "shrill and sarcastic political attacks."

"Anyone who knows Sen. Reid knows he never backs down when he's fighting for what's right and that he always stands up to John McCain when he is wrong," Manley said. "Shrill and sarcastic political attacks may fire up the Republican base, but they don't change the fact that a McCain-Palin administration would mean four more years of failed Bush-Cheney policies."

The Republican vice presidential pick continued to take swings at Obama and his campaign after they raised allegations that she is unfit and inexperienced for the job of vice president. In the past week, she has also faced tough criticism after revealing news that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is pregnant. iReport.com: Mother of 5 fit to be VP?

Both Obama and Republican candidate McCain criticized the attacks, saying family members were off limits. But that didn't stop former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney from taking a perceived jab at Michelle Obama, who once said her husband's White House run made her "really proud" of her country for the first time.

"Just like you, there has never been a day when I was not proud to be an American," Romney said.

Obama's campaign fired back at Romney's remarks before his speech Wednesday night, calling them, "as pathetic as [Romney's] failed presidential campaign."

"Barack Obama has said that families are 'off-limits', and we thought that John McCain agreed," Obama adviser Anita Dunn said. "But tonight, John McCain's handpicked attack dog, Mitt Romney, exposed the fake outrage that the Republicans have been peddling all week as the blatant hypocrisy that it is."

"The McCain team's disgusting attack on Barack Obama's wife shows they would rather generate false outrage to distract from their own problems than talk about the issues facing the American people," Dunn said. "Mitt Romney's attack on a candidate's wife is as pathetic as his failed presidential campaign

[HAL 9000 96]

PWNED?

[pj1959us 0]

I was driving when her speech was given. I caught part of it on the radio and read the transcript last night. Some of the things she said, particularly about Obama, were false. Just because you say something doesn't make it true.

Fact check:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_.../cvn_fact_check

broken link.........so much for that fact check

This was the "fact check" article that was on Yahoo earlier:

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her Republican supporters held back little Wednesday as they issued dismissive attacks on Barack Obama and flattering praise on her credentials to be vice president. In some cases, the reproach and the praise stretched the truth.

Some examples:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

[VisaJourneyLady 33]

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

That's the part that I just don't know how they have the brass neck to make such statements. They are talking about Republicans. They know that the current government is wildly unpopular, but rather than hold up their hands and admit that they have made mistakes, they are simply behaving as if it's some other group of people, maybe even the Dems that have been in power. It was THEM.

[HAL 9000 96]

Liberal media... liberal Washington... damn what's next??

And who's liberal in Washington? Hasn't this country already endured a lunatic conservative for two terms already??

[Ban Hammer 13,340]

Liberal media... liberal Washington... damn what's next??

And who's liberal in Washington?

congress?

[noemij 0]

I thought the speech lacked substance. I wanted to hear something about their plans for education, healthcare, the economy....instead all I heard were sarcastic remarks and a play on fear. I really did not like the line about community organizers. Those people sacrifice a lot for her to say that they don't do anything.