Some Humor From the Campaign Trail

From John McCain speaking in Chicago last night:

“We don’t pay any attention to polls,” when they show him behind, McCain said. “Now we’re up in the polls, 5 points up in Gallup. So those polls are always exactly right … right on the mark, totally accurate. It’s funny how life is with polls.”

Also it’s funny how the latest Obama ad gets things exactly wrong, from the McCain Campaign site:

It appears that two of the citations that the latest Obama ad uses are actually examples of John McCain voting for education funding and Joe Biden voting against it:
John McCain Voted For The Concurrent Resolution That Recommended “Increases In Defense And Education Spending.” “Adoption of the conference report on the concurrent resolution to set broad spending and revenue targets for the next 10 years. The report would reserve Social Security surpluses to shore up the program, call for $777.9 billion in tax reductions over 10 years, recommend increases in defense and education spending and reduce federal debt.” (H. Con. Res. 68, CQ Vote #86: Adopted 54-44: R 54-0; D 0-44, 4/15/99, McCain Voted Yea)

Joe Biden Voted Nay.
In 2000, John McCain Voted For The Labor, Health And Human Services, And Education Department Appropriations Bill, Which Provided $354.6 Billion. “Passage of the bill that would appropriate approximately $354.6 billion for the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education departments and related agencies, including $99.8 billion in discretionary spending.” (H.R. 4577, CQ Vote #171: Passed 52-43: R 44-10; D 8-33, 6/30/00, McCain Voted Yea)

Joe Biden Voted Nay.

The Latest Smear: Sarah Palin Wants to Star in Fahrenheit 451

The left in their desperation to tumble the amazing popularity of Governor Sarah Palin is having a blogfest, email spamfest, and googlegasm over a letter from Wasilla Alaska. The letter was written by a Democrat from Wasilla, who is a disgruntled supporter of former Wasilla Mayor Stein, defeated in election by Sarah Palin. It’s an anomaly as Sarah won the election after that in Wasilla by an even clearer margin of 3 to 1. It’s full of disgruntled allegations and pseudo attacks, and is driving the notion around the net that Sarah Palin wanted to ban books. Like all moonbat letters, this one carries their inevitable line “I’m scared”.

This resulted from Questions Sarah raised with a librarian, and now there are several lies out there feeding off the non-event. Two key facts:

The Librarian was not fired, but was asked for a standing letter of resignation along with several other city officials. It’s normal for Mayors to do this, since they don’t know how cooperative employees of the former opposition mayor are going to be. The librarian quit two years later of her own volition and moved to Fairbanks.

The list of books Sarah supposedly wants to ban is thoroughly bogus, it’s a standard list that has circulated the net for years of books that other people have attempted to ban, and it includes books that were published after the trumped up overblown “incident” supposedly took place.

The list of rumors, innuendo, and outright lies attacking Governor Palin is astounding, imagine the outrage and umbrage the media would be taking if this dirty tricks campaign were against Nancy Pelosi. For the full list please stop by Explorations.

Meghan Kelly Rips US Magazine Over Sarah Palin Story

Please also note that US magazine is owned by Rolling Stone, who has sent thousands to the Barack Obama Campaign.

UPDATE: Robert Bidinotto is running through the smorgasboard of smears against Sarah Palin and countering them as the left goes deranged in the run up to her speech tonight.

Newt Gingrich Grills MSM Reporter Over Sarah Palin

This is really must see TV — watch about 2:30 into this interview when the reporter brings up the experience question.

The list and litany of things Sarah Palin has done that Obama has not could go on a long, long while. It has always been the case for most of our history that the best apprenticeship for a high level Executive position isn’t a legistlative career, but rather another executive postion. Our stronger presidents and vice presidents have almost always come from Governorships or Mayorial positions. It stands to reason that Sarah is much more qualified than Barack Obama.

Biden Voted Against the Trans Alaska Pipeline

Sarah Palin is very eloquent and convincing in this argument against the Obama/Biden energy plan, please watch the entire interview — she covers a host of salient points.

Sarah Palin is very eloquent and convincing in this argument against the Obama/Biden energy plan, please watch the entire interview — she covers a host of salient points. I also got pinged in email a while back regarding the tagging of energy posts with “Hunger”. Just to bring all readers up to speed, energy prices and hunger are immutably wed. When energy prices go up, food prices will as well. Growing, transporting, and storing food is energy intensive. You can read those articles here.

Catching up

Although it appears that I’ve been slacking lately it’s really a case of over-immersion in work. Apologies to long time readers for all the quick posts of videos, which is really sort of cheating. Blogs are driven mostly by orignal content and perspective, which hasn’t been provided the past two weeks. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do, but first some quick thoughts on recent events.

Politics:

Obama’s speech was ho hum and forgettable, people have already stopped talking about it. I expect a bit more bounce out of the convention than the average Republican pundit has predicted, but it’s going to melt quickly as the Republican convention takes off and with the news of Sarah Palin’s selection as John McCain’s choice as running mate.

The choice is being billed as brilliant, and as an Alaskan, I can’t help but be proud of John McCain’s selection. Like most Alaskans Sarah loves the state itself even with its flaws. This is evidenced by the names she has given some of her children; town and place names from Alaska. (Paxson, Bristol, Willow.) Of course they aren’t all named after Alaskan places, but Piper Indy Grace Palin is named for one of the main means of travel and communication in Alaska.

People are going to be surprised by the competency of Sarah Palin. LIke many Alaskans she has struggled with a harsh environment, vast distances, a cyclical boom-bust ecomony, and a business. That makes most Alaskans realists, and no-nonsense people who like to get things done expeditiously. The other thing that Alaskans have in their favor is an outcome of the long winters, the dark, and the cold — they have a lot of time to read, and are generally better informed than the average US citizen on most issues. The press will be trying to catch her out from the get-go, but they are going to have some rough sledding trying to do that.

To sum up on this subject, McCain’s choice was very smart for several reasons: it diversifies the ticket while almost instantly healing some rifts in the party (something the general press is overlooking at the moment,) it has potential to pull some Hillary voters, but most of all it displays McCain’s ability to make a principled decision once again. Sarah is not from a populous state that the Republicans need to pull in the win column, this is a strong blow from McCain against business as usual “realpolitik”. [ For pics of the ground breaking announcement and the McCain and Palin families as well as the great crowd response please see McCain Blogette.com ]

Ongoing things:

In the coming weeks I plan to pick the investigative articles on WE back up, as well as delineate the benefits of high energy environmentalism better than I have. I will also bring you up to date on happenings in Pakistan and the subcontinent, as well as follow the campaigns. If you are real lucky, I will put up a few more pictures of Kasey too.