As we all know, trusting CNN on the news is rather like trusting an off-shore Internet bookie in a blind game of Texas hold ‘em. But never mind. Let’s take it as “gospel” in their latest round of McCain and Palin bashing that the following is at least semi-accurate… or accurate-ish: McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls — recorded messages often used to attack a candidate’s opponent — “irritating” even as the campaign defended their use.
Irritating? How about an abhorrent intrusion on our privacy? If someone circulated a petition to make robocalls illegal, I would be pleased to sign. And not just the tedious propaganda of political candidates right and left and their minions, but the seemingly endless business calls we are never able to shut off. For the last two years I have been receiving robocalls for a certain “Stanley Simon Ray” approximately three times a week. They begin “If you do not hang up, you acknowledge you are Stanley Simon Ray and are legally…” I can’t recall what it says after that, because I really do hang up. And when I hear it on my answering machine, which is often, I erase it immediately. I don’t know who Stanley Simon Ray is, but my suspicion is he owes somebody a lot of money.
As for Palin, there must be something wrong with me. I’m supposed to be an intellectual of sorts. I have written a number of books (okay, mostly mysteries), I have two Ivy League degrees and I’ve even been known to go to the opera once in a while (though not Wagner); but of all four candidates I find Palin, the supposed yahoo, the most appealing. When the media attacks her, I only like her better. Maybe it’s because I have no idea how to kill a moose but I suspect I know more than Joe Biden about just about anything. (For example, I know FDR was not president when the market crashed in ‘29.)
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37 Comments
1. Rose:Robocalls are awful – though I admit I sometimes listen to them since there’s no sense of obligation or need to express frustration.
Letting Palin be off message – and even to disagree with McCain on some issues is HEALTHY! It’s freedom of speech, it’s respect for a diversity of opinions – they don’t need to be clones, joined at the hip and heavily scripted (ala Clinton)… just be. Honest. Real. And POSITIVELY UPBEAT ABOUT AMERICA!
McCain and Palin really do represent a turning away from party politics as usual – with Lieberman by their side, with the PUMAs working with them, with the heavily Democratic women of NOW standing for what is right for the country and the people and not just the party – I am blown away by what I am seeing.
Is it possible?
Oct 26, 2008 - 12:22 am 2. gm1000:The MSM and liberal elite bash Palin out of fear that she is indeed the future. They keep trying to set a universal standard which favours them and excludes anyone different, particularly the working class which they openly despise. But the working class keeps breaking through… it won’t be kept down or treated like peasantry by ivy league graduates, the people who got us into our current mess and who apparently so overwhelmed their peers that none of them were called on it until too late. America’s genius has been to upend conventional ideas.Its downfall will be to embrace the snobbery of Europe.
Oct 26, 2008 - 4:20 am 3. Newcomb Carlton:gm1000 is right. Sarah Palin alarms the media elite with her authentic charisma, so different from the snobbish, pseudo-intellectual hauteur of Obama that reporters connect with.
Oct 26, 2008 - 5:06 am 4. gumshoe:roger –
I thought you knew an intellectual was someone who had been ‘educated’ beyond his competence.
I don’t think that describes you.
Plus, you still have a sense of humor.
;0p
Oct 26, 2008 - 7:23 am 5. stace:Gov. Palin is running against Joe “Gird your loins!” Biden. I find it hysterically funny that anyone would try to make a big deal of her being off-message.
Oct 26, 2008 - 7:47 am 6. nobozons:We need a conservative news station not just a fair and balanced station. One that can stand up to the Grey hag. One that can take a Frank Rich article and destroy it. One that has an investigative staff and who can dig up the truth about presidential candidates.
Oct 26, 2008 - 7:56 am 7. TexasDude:The ONLY reason I became excited about McCain was due to his selection of Palin.
I was going to vote for McCain anyway, but at least I now didn’t have to hold my nose.
McCain is a patriot, but, in my opinion went a bit too far in several instances in his “maverick” stance.
However, that was much a far better choice than the inkblot test we are getting with Obama.
Oct 26, 2008 - 7:56 am 8. Barry Dauphin:It sounds like a couple of McCain’s advisors are twits. Of course, she is going to go off message. That’s what mavericks do. I think she will want to be at the top of any ticket in the future. That said, the McCain campaign is in desperate shape financially, hence the robocalls. I think the negative publicity about them probably outweighs any value they had. Although the polls show many swings, Obama is consistently in front and in battleground states. I think McCain has to hope for some kind of screw up in the last week by Obama. Biden’s the guy to do it. If Obama is smart, he’ll lock Biden in the basement.
Oct 26, 2008 - 8:07 am 9. chris davis:Roger, your view on Palin is the last political thing I’ll read today. It cheered me up, and i get the rest of my weekend now. I saw Der Freischutz at Opera Boston last week, which made Wagner look like Woody Allen. But it had two beautiful arias and something like a happy ending (the bride only fainted when the gun went off).
Oct 26, 2008 - 8:13 am 10. Lee:Roger, I love Wagner, the Lakers and Sarah!
Oct 26, 2008 - 8:20 am 11. Charlie (Colorado):Translation: “The dumb hick won’t do what I tell her. Well, I’ll fix her wagon.”
Oct 26, 2008 - 9:24 am 12. Roger L Simon:Lee, to be clear, I rather like Wagner, but have a trouble sitting through Die Meistersinger. Call it my attention deficit disorder. As for Sarah, I love her style and moxie, but, as you might guess, I oppose her views on marriage.
Oct 26, 2008 - 9:57 am 13. Mike G:You need to find out who these calls are from by listening to them. The idea that you’re legally acknowledging an identity by listening is absurd. Then you need to send a letter to your state’s attorney general reporting their abuse of the relevant statutes.
Oct 26, 2008 - 10:02 am 14. Anita Hope:Mike G. most of us receiving these calls have better things to do than give them our time and the Attorney General’s office is more than likely aware, but
Oct 26, 2008 - 11:19 am 15. David Thomson:also loaded with important work loads, I am sure. Giving these callers value in what they are doing does nothing but promote more calls and usually the people they are naming are more than likely unaware of their actions. I mean this regarding all parties. I am sure you agree this has been the most ugly
campaign in our history since TV and the computer/internet. It has become like a civil war not between the North & South, but between our voting ciitzens. Whatever the outcome, we will all be in for a bumpy ride…..
“It sounds like a couple of McCain’s advisors are twits.”
These so-called advisors may only be minor employees. The late Tony Snow once joked about allowing a reporter to cite him as an anonymous Bush administration official. Strictly speaking, he was an official. However, the reality was that Snow wasn’t even close to the action. The really serious insiders barely knew he existed!
Oct 26, 2008 - 11:52 am 16. JVDeLong:The political class of both parties dislikes Palin because she actually is what Obama pretends to be — an outsider who shows up the corruptions and incompetences of that class.
Of the ten candidates on the national ticket in the last three elections, Palin is clearly as (or more) qualified to be President as any of them.
Compare her experience as person, mayor and state leader with George Bush’s career as an alcoholic, baseball executive, and ornamental governor. Gore would be disqualified by anyone who actually read his Earth in the Balance, an exercise in messianic ignorance, and by his appalling academic history. Kerry had his unapologized-for Winter Soldier exercise, plus a Senate career of unbroken mediocrity. John Edwards had no shadow of qualification.
Obama’s qualifications are will-o-the-wisp. His supporters cite his “potential,” as they must, because his only actual feat is his first book, and I am among those who think that it was ghosted. Biden has a long history of blurring the line between fantasy and reality, to a degree that one wonders if he sees any distinction. 36 years of this is enough to make him “qualified”, which also tells a lot about the mental processes of the dominant political class.
For McCain, one can deeply respect his courage and service, but he illustrates the fact that Navy flyboys are not chosen for excessive brains. He is an erratic Senator, with a tendency to reach decisions on whim and then regard anyone who disagrees as a moral reprobate, and, as shown by his campaign finance law, a disinclination, or inability, to think even two moves ahead.
This leaves Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney as the only candidates with real resumes, and with regard to Lieberman, Palin’s executive experience gives her an edge.
That fact that the system is producing candidates like this is raising very scary and fundamental questions about the future of democracy, and the political class is determined to avoid recognizing this.
Oct 26, 2008 - 12:22 pm 17. GayPatriot » My nutshell position on Sarah Palin:[...] An intellectual of sorts like Roger Simon, I pretty much agree with his take on the Alaska Governor: As for Palin, there must be something wrong with me. I’m supposed to be an intellectual of [...]
Oct 26, 2008 - 1:31 pm 18. Anita Hope:No one seems to control Sarah Palin and what she belives in, what is so bad about not wanting to be controled? Do any of us want to be under control, I think not, yet we are about to place a man in
Oct 26, 2008 - 2:26 pm 19. chuck:the Presidency that will decide how our young people pay back college loan’s. Who will decide they’re fate, those in control I imagine. Gov. Palin would come up against a democratic house who
would control any changes she might like to change and “Women’s Choice” would not be paramount compared to getting this country back on track to Budget and American Citizens back manufacturing American products. Do we continue to be so blind that both Sen. McCain and Gov.
Palin do not recognize they must get the changes needed to restart our country away from the Bush & Chaney polices, again I think not. All of America has been forced in the past couple years to not want a continuation and just two years ago we were promised vast changes when the control was turned over to a Democratic Control, yet it did nothing to right the wrongs, just turned a blind eye and here we are.
No one in this day of age should vote because of color, we are all of different shades, we must
vote because of what it means to our freedom from control and back on track to promoting better/honest/equal education to all of our children. The American Language must be the basis of educating all those entering our country so their children will have equal opportunity in the
country they have come to for various reasons. Gov. Palin is a woman that will continue to fight
the corruption of those who do not want to loose control. Do we turn over our Freedom to the
Highest Bider of free handouts or do we select two people that will bring our country to a change
truly better education, not the mind control the Ayer’s family has used to stir up this ughliness.
I suspect that Sarah Palin might be a better politician than either her advisors or McCain. And she wants to win this thing unlike, say, David Frum, who has already ceded the field and is looking for a hidey hole.
Oct 26, 2008 - 3:53 pm 20. Mike G:“Mike G. most of us receiving these calls have better things to do than give them our time and the Attorney General’s office is more than likely aware, but also loaded with important work loads, I am sure.”
Is that you, Mom?
Oct 26, 2008 - 5:15 pm 21. david foster:jvdelong…”That fact that the system is producing candidates like this is raising very scary and fundamental questions about the future of democracy”…I think maybe what is happening is this: the public space is increasingly dominated by “word people,” who respect the ability to use written & spoken language well that the abiity to actually do or run anything.
Oct 26, 2008 - 5:31 pm 22. Barbara Skolaut:It’s CNN, who ADMITTED they lied to the US (& the rest of the world) in order to stay in Saddam’s Baghdad.
Unless they can and do name the supposed “source” and produce a tape of him/her saying it, I’ll figure they’re still lying.
According to the media, Nobama has this thing sewn up by at least 10 points (not-so-subtle implication being that conservatives shouldn’t even bother voting). IF that were true, why the increasingly desparate attacks? Might their internals be a wee bit different from their publicly announced polls of The Messiah’s annointing?
Oct 26, 2008 - 5:40 pm 23. Lightnin' Hopkins:I wonder how many times Acorn might have registered ‘Stanley Simon Ray’? With three possible first names, the combinations add up to a lot of hope and change.
gm1000 is dead on; Palin is a longterm threat destined for great things. They view her the same way they did Clarence Thomas — as a traitor (to women; as Thomas was to blacks). Therefore, she must be destroyed.
Oct 26, 2008 - 6:52 pm 24. srlucado:“…of all four candidates I find Palin, the supposed yahoo, the most appealing.”
Me, too. Maybe it’s because she seems like a person, not a politician. Especially compared to the insufferably smug Obama or his motor-mouth running mate.
(By the way, what’s the difference between Joe Biden and a car salesman? A car salesman knows he’s lying.)
Scott
Oct 26, 2008 - 7:29 pm 25. California Dreamer:We need a conservative news station not just a fair and balanced station. One that can stand up to the Grey hag. One that can take a Frank Rich article and destroy it. One that has an investigative staff and who can dig up the truth about presidential candidates.
Subscribe to the Wall Street Journal. It’s more bang for your daily buck than any other outlet..period. And I believe its subscription numbers are growing or at worse flat, compared to the Grey hag.
Oct 26, 2008 - 9:44 pm 26. heather:Mark Steyn is a very cosmopolitan guy, having worked throughout Europe, published in Australia, lived in England, Canada and the USofA.
He says that Sarah Palin could ONLY be an American. No other country could produce such a remarkable person.
The punditry who sneer at her all over-value the Euro/Transnational way of life. They have spent all of their adult professional life pretending that there is a huge gulf between them and the rest of American society.
And I always like to throw in an insult here: have you noticed that Sarah Palin doesn’t look like she has ever been on a diet? She is active and healthy. In contrast, the female punditry like Noonan and Parker, look old and dried out and washed up.
Oct 26, 2008 - 11:24 pm 27. cfbleachers:Sarah Palin has a down home charm, a gracious spirit, an ethical tether to right from wrong, a country over party attitude and horse sense. Heaven forbid we ever let any of that interfere with the perpetual reverse image in that broken mirror called Washington.
Elitism, so smug and pedantic, from lifelong underachievers with pedigrees… is only surpassed by the unearned arrogance of corrupt underachievers, those haughty cretins who constantly try to peddle their “bull excrement” wrapped in their otherwise empty sheepskins.
Heaven forbid…and hell allow.
Oct 27, 2008 - 1:14 am 28. hermie:Let’s face it, the MSM and the Obamatons have done what they could to destroy her and her family, and yet she still is on top.
The MSM allowed the most vile things to be said about her. Inpuning her integrity, her faith, her family and even her marriage; yet they kept their hands off Biden and Obama’s public records, even when their own words and deeds (or lack of them) were right in front of them.
If Obama wins, watch out for a massive funding of Palin’s opponent in the 2010 Governor’s race by the DNC and Soros’ groups. She will have to be either voted out of office (depending upon how many ‘Jimmy Johns’ ACORN can sign up), or the MSM will cook up another ’scandal’.
Palin is the face and voice for the average worker, and Obama and the MSM will do all they can to destroy her.
Oct 27, 2008 - 6:41 am 29. Larry J:I think I finally understand the visceral hatred that gender feminists have for Sarah Palin. Palin was the type of girl in high school that the gender feminists hated – she was very pretty and a jock. They could comfort themselves with the knowledge that they would be going to better schools and undoubtedly come out better in life. Only they didn’t. Sure, the feminists may have attended Ivy League universities while Palin was competing in beauty contests to win scholarship money to lower tier schools. However, Palin is the one who married the hunky but supportive guy. She entered politics and was elected many times, first at the city level, then as governor, and finally (to date) picked to be Vice President on the Republican ticket. That just wasn’t supposed to happen! “Pretty but dumb” Palin was supposed to end up in some trailer park (in the feminists’ fantasies), not come out better than virtually all of the feminists. Noooooooooooooooooooo! So of course they hate her.
Oct 27, 2008 - 9:01 am 30. hermie:Palin is the kind of person the feminists always claimed to support. She may have not gone to an Ivy League school, but she kept plugging away until she got her degree. Funny thing is that most women in America can’t afford to go to Harvard, and have done quite well (and maybe even better) in state universities; or needed to transfer to another school; or even taken off a year or two, then continued their studies.
The feminists claimed that a woman could have it all: career, family, home, etc. They never revealed so blatantly that they also meant that you had to adhere to the dogma of the elitists within the feminist movement, until Sarah Palin came onto the national scene. There was no room for difference of opinion. If you were a person of faith, you had to leave it behind and embrace the secularism of the movement.
Palin does have it all, and she did it without belonging to the ‘Club’. She is not bitter, arrogant, or upset about being a victim of historical repression.
She is quite content with her life, and that’s what the elitists are so angry about.
Oct 27, 2008 - 12:32 pm 31. Larry J:Palin does have it all, and she did it without belonging to the ‘Club’. She is not bitter, arrogant, or upset about being a victim of historical repression.
She is quite content with her life, and that’s what the elitists are so angry about.
The fact that she also seems to love both men and her all of her children seems to upset the feminists as well.
Oct 27, 2008 - 12:43 pm 32. Stacia D:I’ve become more and more distressed to hear thoughtful Republicans out bashing McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as justification for supporting the candidacy of The One. I’m a professional woman who truly appreciates this woman who came from ordinary roots, not an Ivy League background, and not on her husband’s coattails, and it is infuriating to hear her being bashed by ‘elites’ of every stripe.
Oct 27, 2008 - 2:25 pm 33. California Dreamer:Just to confirm, courtesy of Editor & Publisher today:
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL — 2,011,999 — 0.01%
NEW YORK TIMES — 1,000,665 — (-3.58%)
LOS ANGELES TIMES — 739,147 — (-5.20%)
THE WASHINGTON POST — 622,714 — (-1.94%)
and my least favorite, now down to one-sixth the size of the WSJ, the incredible shrinking….
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE — 339,430 — (-7.07%)
Oct 27, 2008 - 7:59 pm 34. Boatbulder:My Ivy-league Democrat friends have taken to informing me that Palin is a “drag on the ticket” and that McCain should have picked Romney. I ask them whether they would have voted for McCain in that instance–of course not!
Oct 29, 2008 - 6:47 pm 35. Jesse:I was a Romney backer in the primary and have some real misgivings about McCain. I think Sarah Palin is great, and I now support McCain–or the ticket, anyway–strongly.
And most of my less elitist friends–who think Bush is the moron that the MSM has cast him as, and usually vote Dem–say they think Sarah is great.
BTW–I attended a small New England liberal arts college and a top-10 law school. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what makes the elitists–most of all the Republicans–tick.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed until Wednesday.
She lost me in the backstage Couric interview. I can tell you that I read Al Jazeera snd Ha’aretz every week. I read Roger Simon (albeit not ‘print’) and the NYTimes. I read the Toronto Star and the Globe and Mail. Called me confused. Call me undecisive, but at least I am aware of my surroundings. Palin is not aware of much around her. Ignorance is sometimes misjudged as innocence. Now, does one have to be able to list all of their daily activities – quickly and concisely – to please me or you, or the MSM ‘elite’? No they don’t. Just don’t be surprised when, I, an interested everyday Joe is proud to be informed, and she clearly is unable to answer the most simple question.
That’s just my opinion. I’m aware I’m a vast majority on here.
Oct 31, 2008 - 12:52 pm 36. Senator Smoot:Jesse, you probably mean minority.
I really like Sarah for the spirit and verve. I’d have reservations about her maturity as a leader, and I certainly get the willies from pols who can talk of “God’s will” and government policy in the same breath. All that said, I’d absolutely love to see her grow into the job.
Nov 1, 2008 - 8:52 am 37. Jesse:Yes Smoot. I did mean Minority. Just like my mouth, my fingers don’t always type exactly what I’d like them to.
Nov 3, 2008 - 9:50 am