The 2008 Fall Campaign

[Big Magilla]

One of those on-line I.Q. test things has come up with a new angle - "Sarah Palin has an I.Q. of 127. Are you smarter than Sarah Palin?" It might be worth taking.

[criddic3]

From The New York Times:

November 13, 2008
A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

The Washington Monthly nicely puts the story into context:

The assumption seems to be that this shows that Palin was never actually confused about Africa being a continent, and that the whole story was just a hoax. But that's not what this article actually says.

An MSNBC report credited Martin Eisenstadt, who doesn't exist, as the original source of the Palin/Africa claim. The hoax, however, is the bogus source validating the story, not the Palin/Africa story itself.

The original reporting on the Palin/Africa story came from Fox News' Carl Cameron, who reported last week on the McCain campaign's apparent frustration with Palin's ignorance. Cameron cited campaign aides as his source. Later, Palin said her comments about Africa had been "taken out of context."

The New York Times story about the Eisenstadt hoax doesn't mention Cameron's original reporting at all, and as far as I can tell, Cameron has not retracted his story.

Some are understandably skeptical about whether Palin really could have been confused about whether Africa is a continent, but barring additional revelations, the story is not a hoax and there's no reason to think "Eisenstadt" was the source of the story. The problem here is with MSNBC crediting a bogus person, not the original reporting itself.

But where did Cameron get his story from? Who were these "sources"? Did he hear the same story that the hoax told, or were the people who talked to him using that to fool Cameron? See, the story just doesn't ring true.

But even if it were, as I stated before, many politicans misspeak while campaigning for office. This includes several hilarious examples from our current Vice-president-elect Joe Biden.

[Damien]

One more thing on this subject. Seems like Palin wasn't the first high-profile Republican to be connfused about the status of Africa.

From Bill In Portland, Maine.com:

A good way for Sarah Palin to learn about Africa would be listening to President Bush, who once said: "We spent a lot of time talkin' about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease." Learnin's fun!

[Damien]

From The New York Times:

November 13, 2008
A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

The Washington Monthly nicely puts the story into context:

The assumption seems to be that this shows that Palin was never actually confused about Africa being a continent, and that the whole story was just a hoax. But that's not what this article actually says.

An MSNBC report credited Martin Eisenstadt, who doesn't exist, as the original source of the Palin/Africa claim. The hoax, however, is the bogus source validating the story, not the Palin/Africa story itself.

The original reporting on the Palin/Africa story came from Fox News' Carl Cameron, who reported last week on the McCain campaign's apparent frustration with Palin's ignorance. Cameron cited campaign aides as his source. Later, Palin said her comments about Africa had been "taken out of context."

The New York Times story about the Eisenstadt hoax doesn't mention Cameron's original reporting at all, and as far as I can tell, Cameron has not retracted his story.

Some are understandably skeptical about whether Palin really could have been confused about whether Africa is a continent, but barring additional revelations, the story is not a hoax and there's no reason to think "Eisenstadt" was the source of the story. The problem here is with MSNBC crediting a bogus person, not the original reporting itself.

[flipp525]

Personally, I wouldn't vote for Joe Biden as president (and neither has more than 1% of his party), but we may end up with him in that role some day.

Um, why, exactly? Because you think Obama is going to be assassinated? Is this the latest talking point making the rounds in the right-wing blogosphere or just your own personal brand of unintelligible, poorly-worded drivel?

Frankly, I'd love to see some big-dicked black stallion fucking Sarah Palin up the ass and her writhing in agony. Todd can be his on-screen fluffer. It'd be the first straight porn I'd buy.



Edited By flipp525 on 1226606504

[criddic3]

From The New York Times:

November 13, 2008
A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

Now a pair of obscure filmmakers say they created Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character. But under the circumstances, why should anyone believe a word they say?

“That’s a really good question,” one of the two, Eitan Gorlin, said with a laugh.

(For what it’s worth, another reporter for The New York Times is an acquaintance of Mr. Gorlin and vouches for his identity, and Mr. Gorlin is indeed “Mr. Eisenstadt” in those videos. He and his partner in deception, Dan Mirvish, have entries on the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com. But still. ...)

They say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.

“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.

Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.

An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”

But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.

The hoax began a year ago with short videos of a parking valet character, who Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish said was the original idea for a TV series.

Soon there were videos showing him driving a car while spouting offensive, opinionated nonsense in praise of Rudolph W. Giuliani. Those videos attracted tens of thousands of Internet hits and a bit of news media attention.

When Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the presidential race, the character morphed into Eisenstadt, a parody of a blowhard cable news commentator.

Mr. Gorlin said they chose the name because “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”

Eisenstadt became an adviser to Senator John McCain and got a blog, updated occasionally with comments claiming insider knowledge, and other bloggers began quoting and linking to it. It mixed weird-but-true items with false ones that were plausible, if just barely.

The inventors fabricated the Harding Institute, named for one of the most scorned presidents, and made Eisenstadt a senior fellow.

It didn’t hurt that a man named Michael Eisenstadt is a real expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is quoted in the mainstream media. The real Mr. Eisenstadt said in an interview that he was only dimly aware of the fake one, and that his main concern was that people understood that “I had nothing to do with this.”

Before long Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish had produced a short documentary on Martin Eisenstadt, supposedly for the BBC, posted in several parts on YouTube.

In June they produced what appeared to be an interview with Eisenstadt on Iraqi television promoting construction of a casino in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Then they sent out a news release in which he apologized. Outraged Iraqi bloggers protested the casino idea.

Among the Americans who took that bait was Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. A few hours later Mr. Stein put up a post on the magazine’s political blog, with the title “Hoax Alert: Bizarre ‘McCain Adviser’ Too Good to Be True,” and explained how he had been fooled.

In July, after the McCain campaign compared Senator Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, the Eisenstadt blog said “the phone was burning off the hook” at McCain headquarters, with angry calls from Ms. Hilton’s grandfather and others. A Los Angeles Times political blog, among others, retold the story, citing Eisenstadt by name and linking to his blog.

Last month Eisenstadt blogged that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief. It wasn’t true, but other bloggers ran with it.

Among those taken in by Monday’s confession about the Palin Africa report was The New Republic’s political blog. Later the magazine posted this atop the entry: “Oy — this would appear to be a hoax. Apologies.”

But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that “there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out.”

And then there is William K. Wolfrum, a blogger who has played Javert to Eisenstadt’s Valjean, tracking the hoaxster across cyberspace and repeatedly debunking his claims. Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish praised his tenacity, adding that the news media could learn something from him.

“As if there isn’t enough misinformation on this election, it was shocking to see so much time wasted on things that didn’t exist,” Mr. Wolfrum said in an interview.

And how can we know that Mr. Wolfrum is real and not part of the hoax?

Long pause. “Yeah, that’s a tough one.”

[criddic3]

Well if that isn't the most insulting thing I've heard in a long time! The woman may be beautiful (for a woman, hehe), she is a respectable and professional person. She's the governor of one of the largest states in the union. Do you hear of anyone asking Kathleen Sebelius or Linda Lingle, or any of the male governors, to be in a porn film?

And Mister Tee, she certainly knew the difference. For 9 weeks the woman was herded from one event to another, the spotlight on her in a way she had never experienced. It's not like Democrats have less trouble with such things....remember Joe Biden telling the world that "after the Stock Market crashed, FDR went on television to reassure the people...." We could trade a number of these if you like. It doesn't mean that these aren't qualified people. Personally, I wouldn't vote for Joe Biden as president (and neither has more than 1% of his party), but we may end up with him in that role some day. We should try to respect these people, especially once the election campaign is over.

[Greg]

Palin offered $2M to appear in porn movie

Sarah Palin has received her first job offer since failing in her bid to become vice-president of the United States -- to appear in a porno movie.

Florida-based porn director Cezar Capone has offered to pay Palin $2 million to appear in an adult film production.

Capone promises in an open letter on his website that the film would be distributed internationally, shot in high definition and feature a "beautiful mother recognized by all of America as well as the rest of the world -- the most desirable woman over 40."

To prove he's serious about the offer, Capone says he's prepared to hold the money in escrow immediately.

To sweeten the deal, Palin's husband Todd has been offered a co-starring role in the production, for which Capone would be "prepared to kick in an extra $100,000," and a new Arctic Cat snowmobile.

Palin hasn't publicly responded to the offer, which was sent to her administration office in Juneau, Alaska, on Nov. 6.

http://current.com/items....vie.htm

[Mister Tee]

I have to say I've come to the point where I don't really want to hear anything more about Sarah Palin. I know she's so much fun, and so easy, to make fun of. But I'd just as soon put her in the rear-view mirror, so Keith, Rachel -- give it a rest. (Unless she runs in '12, which I think would be a gift to the Democratic party)

However...let me take one last shot.

I was walking outside an hour or two ago. Granted I live in the People's Repubic of the Upper West Side, but I saw a guy coming toward me who looked extremely Aryan/bordering on skinhead. He was speaking into his cell phone, and he was saying "She didn't know AFRICA was a CONTINENT!" I think that sentence might be her version of what "potatoe" was for Dan Quayle -- the final confirmation of eternal jokedom.

[anonymous1980]

Here's a very well-written piece posted in SlantMagazine. I think criddic will find it very informative:

The Future of the GOP
By: Sal Cinquemani

There was a period a few years ago, perhaps felt most potently in the days and weeks following the 2004 presidential election, when Karl Rove's fantasy of a permanent Republican majority seemed less like a pipedream and more like modern political reality—and for many, even a nightmare. That nightmare, of course, began on December 12th, 2000, 19 days before the start of the so-called New American Century, when the Supreme Court effectively handed the presidency to George W. Bush. In an interview during the Democratic primary, Barack Obama declared that Ronald Reagan "changed the trajectory of America," and, with the guidance of Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfield, Paul Wolfowitz and others, the same could be said of Bush, who is to neoconservatism what Reagan was to the New Right.

Ronald Reagan has been hailed as a hero by almost every subsection of the conservative movement—isolationists, neocons, libertarians, Christians, Arnold Schwarzenegger—but he was filled with contradictions. He saw government as the enemy but raised taxes to save one of its biggest socialized institutions. He took nationalism to the extreme, likening the United States to something out of Disney or the Bible and its biggest adversary to something out of Star Wars, but somehow did it in a way that united the country even as his traditionally conservative preference for liberty over equality inherently divided it. He was an actor. His greatest gift was convincing people that he spoke to them and represented their interests, that he was a populist instead of an elitist, that he was a libertarian rather than a xenophobe. In many ways, this is what made him a unifier; it's what helped the 1984 electoral map look like the end of days for the left.

Creating a majority isn't difficult. If Reagan was a transformative figure in the 1980s, as Obama has said, it was because he had big ideas that, even if you disagreed with them, inspired people. Reagan and Bush's approaches, however, were quite different. When they weren't flag-waving and fear-mongering in tandem with fundamental Islamic terrorism, Bush and his party's winning formula was to demonize and divide, with a vast, cynically engineered culture war designed to split the country into red and blue, good and evil, moral and immoral, patriotic and unpatriotic, American and un-American, and the two-pronged formula worked wonderfully. The mantra was divide and conquer, and conquer they did. And neither Bush nor Reagan could do it without the religious right.

One of the basic tenets of neoconservatism is the rejection of the belief that moral or ethical truths are not absolute, and the idea that one group or political party could own a monopoly on morality, that God is on its side, is, I think, the most dangerous kind of politics, the kind that pits one group of people against another in its quest for power. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority helped get Reagan elected, and through the 1990s these groups continued to oppose equal rights for women and gays as well as first-amendment rights in the media. These people, and the politicians who court them, aren't moral at all; they are moralistic. What they believe in is beyond examination, and this is the basic ideology of social conservatism, what pushes a traditional conservative who believes in limited government to seek to legislate what Americans can see, read and hear, what they do with their bodies and who they do it with.

Sustaining a majority is, evidently, a more challenging enterprise than creating one. In its attempt to exploit the religious right during the last decade, the Republican Party became enslaved by it. In its attempt to shield the corporate fat cats who lined its pockets and filled its voting booths, the party sold its soul and watched its stock tumble. And in its attempt to create American hegemony abroad, it weakened the country's standing all over the globe. The Bush administration's ideological stance on taxes (and especially taxes during wartime), its constant assault on civil liberties and the Constitution, and its complete disregard of the justice system are patently un-American. The hypocrisies of today's social conservatism as a whole make Reagan's contradictions look quaint. "Reagan Democrat" is a term we've heard in spades this election cycle, but it's unlikely we'll ever hear "Bush Liberal."

The incompetence with which the Bush administration presided over terror, war and weather was astounding, but still party loyalists remained loyal and the left remained impotent. But the tides have turned: Republicans are now being forced to apologize for, or back-peddle on, their unpatriotic accusations of anti-Americanism. And minds are opening. It's tempting to say it's too little, too late, that the damage—to our markets, to our civil liberties, to our reputation, to the environment—is done, but true patriotism, true Americanism is both the ability to acknowledge America's flaws and the willingness to address them.

My father is a Reaganite. He came from very little, worked hard for what he had, wanted to keep what he earned, never got any handouts and didn't think anyone else should either. He did well enough to eventually buy two homes, send his children to college and live comfortably with my mother through retirement. He believed in limited government, the free market, a strong military and war as a final option. He twice voted for both Reagan and George W. Bush. My parents did everything "right," but now, as they approach their twilight years, their government has failed them. They've watched their retirement savings dwindle and their government attempt to flaunt its power with its military muscle rather than with quiet might. My father is disappointed and embarrassed. And for every voter John McCain gained by pandering to the extreme right, he lost a devoted, lifelong Republican like my dad.

It's unclear if it's because there are simply more pressing issues than partisanship, or because, as a wise Republican once said, "you can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time," but the tried and true tactics of neoconservatism are no longer working the way they once did. The 2006 election wasn't a fluke or simply a one-time repudiation of Bush's war; the last two elections have been a referendum on the modern conservative movement, the Republican brand as a whole, and the party's failure to protect, enrich, strengthen and unify the country. It's a sea change, and while war fatigue and belated semi-consciousness may have turned the people against the president, it took a financial collapse to turn his most ardent supporters against him in the last 45 days like so many rats jumping ship just as the hull sinks beneath the surface. Whether due to an innate compulsion to be on the side of victory or permission to express one's true feelings granted by the opposition's said victory, right-wingers joined Team Obama in near droves during the final weeks of the campaign. They smelled defeat.

Republicans lustfully watched what they thought was the Democratic Party devouring itself during the primary season. In retrospect, though, Barack Obama was waging his biggest, most important battle: As the late Tim Russert observed, he went toe-to-toe with the Clinton machine, with a former First Lady, with Bill Clinton himself, and emerged victorious. And he handily proved the theory of survival of the fittest in the general election by manning a campaign that, even when it made mistakes, displayed enormous levels of grace and organization. The Democratic Party unified quickly, thanks in no small part to Hillary Clinton herself but more so because the two candidates' platforms were never all that dissimilar: Democrats mobilized to finally eradicate Washington of neoconservative ideology.

So what now? Liberals and many conservatives, like my father, may hope that Sarah Palin will fade into obscurity as quickly as she appeared on the political stage, that her future will consist solely of late-night punchlines and Geraldine Ferraro-esque appearances on Hannity & Colmes, but Dan Quayle never mobilized people the way Palin has, and he certainly couldn't fill an arena. Is it possible that John McCain's legacy will have been that, in the final throes of desperation and political ambition, he helped resurrect the near-dead neoconservative movement by anointing its new patron saint and thrusting upon us a demigod for the religious right—a group he never really supported and who never really supported him? When asked recently if he thinks Palin is the future of the Republican Party, McCain said, "To a large degree, as vice president or, or—," and then stopped himself, for it may have been too horrifying an admission for a man who earned his maverick image by bucking his own party and taking independent, principled stances on the major issues of our time, by standing up to the right-wing "agents of intolerance" that Palin represents.

The depth and breadth of the religious right's chokehold on the Republican Party was evident during the primary, when former frontrunners like the socially moderate Rudy Guiliani and Mitt Romney were drummed out of the race and, for a brief time, it seemed like Arkansas Governor and former Southern Baptist minister Mike Huckabee had invigorated the conservative base in ways none of the other candidates, including McCain, had. Huckabee talked openly about Jesus Christ and boasted of his Christian faith in his campaign ads. And when it was clear he had no path to the nomination aside from, say, divine intervention (he credited his first victory, in Iowa, to God's will), he claimed he would remain in the race to give voice to cultural conservatives across the country, all the while splitting the religious vote with Romney, a Mormon, and effectively handing the election to McCain.

Huckabee, who some in the media speculated could be the future of the Republican Party, moved on to FOX News, but Sarah Palin has picked up the baton. A more moderate voice like Romney might be able to move the party in a more fiscally responsible direction, but his religious background has proven to be an albatross, limiting his reach among Evangelicals and others in the Christian majority. Aside from being suspicious of any politician whose beliefs do not coincide with their faith, this segment of the Republican Party is largely contemptuous of critical thought, nuance, and moral, cultural and intellectual relativism. This rift, between activist conservatives—whose primary objective is not the size of government or national security but legislating morality—and more libertarian, fiscally conservative, small-government Republicans threatens to split the party right down the middle, an improbable but not entirely impossible outcome of the right's very own culture war.

The Republican Party is fracturing and it needs to find a new identity. Following weeks of Rove-esque attacks, the kind that lost him his party's nomination in 2000 at the hands of George W. Bush and which, in a particularly maverick-y move, led him to consider switching parties, McCain attempted to focus on taxes during the final days of his 2008 campaign. Granted, he was handed a gift with Obama's "spread the wealth" comment and he and Palin disseminated their new message with the cynical, boogeyman flair consistent with modern neoconservatism, but cooler heads might view the move as McCain's attempt at preserving the party's traditional platform in the wake of what was clearly going to be a devastating and symbolic defeat for Republicans. Or maybe they had just run out of ideas.

In order to win in recent years, Democrats have had to move to the center, something that Republicans rarely do, so sure they are that the country is center-right. But the demographics are changing, and with Barack Obama as President, America has a new face. Simply finding minority candidates who have conservative values will not diversify and expand the Republican Party any more than picking a vice presidential candidate in a skirt will score them women voters. The ascension of Palin as a national figure and potential leader of the party continues to chip away at the fissures begun by Bush. The challenge for the party is to find Republican solutions for American problems, including health care, energy and the economy, and then hope that in the process a leader who can speak to the entire nation, both red and blue, will emerge. The Republican Party's future requires the expansion and unification of their tent, something that will be nearly impossible for a political group that has built its entire platform on divisiveness rather than inclusiveness.

[OscarGuy]

To correct that person's letter, the amendment does NOT revoke any marriages performed up to election day. There may be some concern that some might try to invalidate them, but by law, the amendment can't invalidate them.

[taki15]

Can anyone tell me how this guy gets paid by the New York Times?

"If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her ... Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I'll predict that right now,"
- Bill Kristol, December 17, 2006. (Hat tip: Salon.)

[Penelope]

AmericaBlog wants Robert Redford to remove the Sundance Film Festival from Utah following the Mormon church's financial support to passing Prop 8:

"It's time we held Utah accountable for the hate and bigotry it gladly exports to the rest of our union.

Mormons from Utah dumped millions into Prop 8, the anti-gay proposition in California that just passed - they are personally responsible for revoking the marriages of nearly 20,000 gay couples. This is not the first time the Mormons went beyond their borders to promote hate and intolerance of gays and lesbians - it's been happening for years. The Mormon church regularly intervenes around the country to promote hatred, bigotry and discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans. Enough is enough. The Mormon church, and its associated businesses, are free to foment discrimination against gay and lesbian Americans, but we are also free to stop frequenting the businesses of those who would make our children bastards, and we their parents second class citizens.

It's time to stop funding those businesses and individuals who promote hate. And let's start with the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. It's high time Sundance found a better state to party in than the seat of the Mormon Church. Sundance is THE gathering of liberal Hollywood. The last place it should be is in Utah. Robert Redford, are you out there?"

[OscarGuy]

Living in a 56% McCain county (77k votes for McCain, 55k for Obama), I know your frustration better than anyone. We have TWO whole Democratic Representatives for our county because they encompass most of downtown, thankfully I live in one and we re-elected our great rep again. But, county-wide, there was only one bright spot and it wasn't a Dem win...matter of fact, I'm a little pissed.

Our Public Administrator was retiring. Her assistant, Laura Fabro, had significant experience in the office, picked up the retiring Administrator's endorsement and the endorsement of our local newspaper (quite a feat considering all the Repubs they endorsed). But, she lost out to a Republican simply because he was a Republican. There was no reason she shouldn't have won. Her opponent had no experience and no idea what the job entailed, so she lost. He won and it really stinks. But what do you expect from a district that generated John Ashcroft and currently has Roy Blunt as it's US Rep?

But, like I mentioned. There is one bright spot (outside of my district's re-election of our Dem state rep). There was an initiative on the ballot for our county to adopt a non-partisan court plan in the Missouri constitution. Apparently, we are one of the few counties that had all judges for the circuit have to be voted in by the public. Now, there is a state-wide court where new judges must apply and then a list of options are submitted to the governor who then chooses the circuit judge. That judge then has one year and must go up for affirmation before being allowed to serve a full term. Thankfully, although by the slimmest of margins, the measure passed. Which means that, at least for one year, we'll have non-partisan judges on the bench instead of party-affiliated judges with huge monetary backing.

[Eric]

Yes, Obama was actually just about the only bright spot of the whole election, from where I was sitting. (Granted, it's a pretty effing massive bright spot, but still ...)

Here's a nifty summary of Minn.:

http://www.minnpost.com/stories....suitors