Sorry to interrupt the Republican “Non-Implosion is Victory” party, but there was some breaking news in Anchorage tonight that came out a couple minutes before the debate.

An Anchorage judge today refused to halt the Legislature’s investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin and denied the state attorney general’s attempt to throw out legislative subpoenas.

Superior Court Judge Peter Michalski heard arguments from both sides this morning and ruled just before 5 p.m. this afternoon.

“I think it’s great. It’s a big day for the state of Alaska,” said Peter Maassen, the lawyer representing the Legislative Council, which ordered the investigation.

Maassen said he expected the other side to attempt a last-minute appeal to the state Supreme Court.

It’s last-minute because the investigator hired by the Legislative Council, Steve Branchflower, is to present his report in a week. Branchflower is looking into Palin’s dismissal of her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, and whether she improperly pressured him to fire a state trooper divorced from her sister. There is intense national interest in the outcome now that Palin is the Republican nominee for vice president. read the full original story here

This is the new Obama ad made from the VP debate concerning Joh McCain's insane Healthcare tax. WTF,5,000 won't even buy a night's stay in a hospital.

"We cannot recall when there were lower expectations for a candidate than the ones that preceded Sarah Palin’s appearance in Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate with Joseph Biden. After a series of stumbling interviews that raised serious doubts even among conservatives about her fitness to serve as vice president, Ms. Palin had to do little more than say one or two sensible things and avoid an election-defining gaffe".

The New York Times Opinion page published an editorial after the VP debate last night. We think it is notable for two reasons: one, for for the truth it expresses about the debate and Ms. Palin's performance; and, two, for the words in which it expresses that truth. Its language so closely resembles the very words that American women have been writing to us this past month, that we thought it well worth quoting here:

"We cannot recall when there were lower expectations for a candidate than the ones that preceded Sarah Palin’s appearance in Thursday night’s vice-presidential debate with Joseph Biden. After a series of stumbling interviews that raised serious doubts even among conservatives about her fitness to serve as vice president, Ms. Palin had to do little more than say one or two sensible things and avoid an election-defining gaffe.

...In the end, the debate did not change the essential truth of Ms. Palin’s candidacy: Mr. McCain made a wildly irresponsible choice that shattered the image he created for himself as the honest, seasoned, experienced man of principle and judgment. It was either an act of incredible cynicism or appallingly bad judgment."

Dave O'Goreman said:

Let no one say that Sarah Palin didn’t do an exemplary job in her debate with Joe Biden; she did. She was engaging, she was folksy, she was in far better command of the material than any of us expected. I wouldn’t have winked, I wouldn’t have clinched my teeth, and I certainly wouldn’t have pressed on talking points that Biden had already debunked. But she certainly outperformed relative to her expectations, and there’s not a person in the country who can say otherwise in good faith.

Too bad for her that someone else was up there on the stage. From start to finish, Biden refused to shrink from the conventional job of a VP nominee. He didn’t let Palin get away with saying that Obama would raise taxes on people when he wouldn’t, and he didn’t let her have the last word when she tried to recycle a sound bite he’d already swatted down. Instead of demurring to her gender, as Team Blue had promised he might, Biden came out swinging, strongly disagreeing with her, oblivious to her gender, and ready on
every point.

Most columnists agreed that Palin had the lower expectations at the outset, but significantly fewer pundits noted that she also had the far more challenging objective to reverse the near comic tailspin in which the McCain ticket has found itself over the past ten to fifteen days. The undecided have been breaking hard for the challengers, with national tracking polls showing Obama leading by as many as eleven points, and an electoral map that’s lit as blue as a store-closing sale at a K-Mart.

CNN poll of all debate viewers: Biden 51%-Palin 36%

CBS poll of undecided voters: Biden 46%,-Palin 21%-Draw 33%

As for Democracky’s unscientific poll, so far it’s nearly unanimous for Biden

REACTION... Bob Shrum: "She Barely Kept Up"... "McCain Lost the VP Debate Too"... Madeleine Albright: "Biden's Night... We Need A VP Who Can Be Persuasive With Foreign Leaders"... Arianna Huffington: "Not A Very Good Night For Palin"... Leah McElrath Renna: "Biden's Tears Did More For The Equality Of The Sexes Than Palin's Presence"... Nora Ephron: Not The "Exciting Blood Bath We Were Hoping For"... Adam McKay: Biden Was "Masterful"... Paul Reiser: "Hey, She Didn't Stink Up The Joint"... More HuffPost Reaction..

McCain Pulling Out Of Michigan

 

 

The Politico reports that John McCain's electoral map is getting smaller:

John McCain is pulling out of Michigan, according to two Republicans, a stunning move a month away from Election Day that indicates the difficulty Republicans are having in finding blue states to put in play.

McCain will go off TV in Michigan, stop dropping mail there and send most of his staff to more competitive states, including Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida. Wisconsin went for Kerry in 2004, Ohio and Florida for Bush.

 

Palin on McCain Campaign Pulling Out of Michigan

by DCDemocrat 

Tonight I call on the McCain campaign to stop treating Sarah Palin like she is a delicate flower that will wilt at any moment," said Brown. "This woman is from Alaska from crying out loud. She is strong. She is tough. She is competent. And you claim she is ready to be one heart beat away form the presidency. If that is the case, then end this chauvinistic treatment of her now. Allow her to show her stuff. Allow her to face down those pesky reporters... Let her have a real news conference with real questions. By treating Sarah Palin different from the other candidates in this race, you are not showing her the respect she deserves. Free Sarah Palin. Free her from the chauvinistic chain you are binding her with. Sexism in this campaign must come to an end. Sarah Palin has just as much a right to be a real candidate in this race as the men do. So let her act like one."

If you liked the real one you'll love this one.

Then we have The ad that defines John McCain (even for dummies) in his own words

Digg it 

Also the saturday morning round up goes a little something like this:

9/20 Daily Kos R2K Tracking Poll: Obama 50, McCain 42

by DemFromCT

Sat Sep 20, 2008 at 05:09:37 AM PDT

Palin’s Private Tanning Bed in the Alaska Governor’s Mansion

One of Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin’s First Actions as Alaska Governor Was to Equip the State Building with a Tanning Bed

By Al Giordano and Bill Conroy
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

September 15, 2008

The story is familiar: a politician emerges, we are told, from humble roots and pledges to restore America’s small town family values and represent the common man and woman. Late last month, the Republican Party offered the United States just such a leader in Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, or so they said. “Mother. Moose hunter. Maverick,” announced the video with which the GOP introduced this candidate so far unknown to the rest of the nation.

An expensive, specialized machine, unaffordable and out of reach to most American homes, utilized to artificially enhance one’s appearance, provides an apt metaphor for political image-making in campaigns. In fact, such an energy-hungry appliance, in most cases, requires a dedicated circuit, a voltage regulator and 220 volt wiring (and for some deluxe models, a hardwire connection to the power source) — a set-up not found in 96-year-old homes.

Republican presidential nominee John McCain recently said, of Palin, “she knows more about energy than probably anybody in the United States of America.” That kind of hyperbole can be expected from the guy who picked her out of relative obscurity, but so far both McCain and Palin have claimed that Alaska supplies “20 percent” of the United States’ energy, when, according to factcheck.org, that figure is “not even close… Alaska’s share of domestic energy production was 3.5 percent,” and just 2.4 percent of total domestic energy consumption. Okay, so Palin may not know more about energy than other national leaders, but the revelation that her newly re-wired Governor’s Mansion includes a tanning bed may indicate that in this time of high oil prices forcing most Americans to conserve energy, Palin consumes more energy than the others.

Stipulated: that the Alaska Governor installed a personal tanning bed is hardly on the level of importance of her policy stances and record in public office. But like a previous national office aspirant’s $400 haircut, it’s the sort of fact that can become emblematic of a larger narrative about inauthenticity, insincerity and overblown claims of “everyday people” street cred that have been floated by the McCain-Palin campaign about its newest member.

Governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin has a darkening secret in the Alaska Governor’s Mansion.

So funny but oh so true!

Here are excerpts from two interesting reads of the day.

Most troubling of all....

“Do you believe in the Bush doctrine?” Mr. Gibson asked during the interview. Ms. Palin looked like an unprepared student who wanted nothing so much as to escape this encounter with the school principal.

Clueless, she asked, “In what respect, Charlie?”

“Well, what do you interpret it to be?” said Mr. Gibson.

“His worldview?” asked Ms. Palin.

Later, in the spin zones of cable TV, commentators repeatedly made the point that there are probably very few voters — some specifically mentioned “hockey moms” — who could explain the Bush doctrine. But that’s exactly the reason we have such long and intense campaigns. You want to find the individuals who best understand these issues, who will address them in sophisticated and creative ways that enhance the well-being of the nation.

The Bush doctrine, which flung open the doors to the catastrophe in Iraq, was such a fundamental aspect of the administration’s foreign policy that it staggers the imagination that we could have someone no further than a whisper away from the White House who doesn’t even know what it is.

You can’t imagine that John McCain or Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Joe Lieberman would not know what the Bush doctrine is. But Sarah Palin? Absolutely clueless."

Note to self: If the war minded presidential hopeful and the clueless Saint S Sidekick win this election we are in big trouble indeed.

 

Gov. Palin’s Worldview

As we watched Sarah Palin on TV the last couple of days, we kept wondering what on earth John McCain was thinking.

If he seriously thought this first-term governor — with less than two years in office — was qualified to be president, if necessary, at such a dangerous time, it raises profound questions about his judgment. If the choice was, as we suspect, a tactical move, then it was shockingly irresponsible.

It was bad enough that Ms. Palin’s performance in the first televised interviews she has done since she joined the Republican ticket was so visibly scripted and lacking in awareness.

What made it so much worse is the strategy for which the Republicans have made Ms. Palin the frontwoman: win the White House not on ideas, but by denigrating experience, judgment and qualifications.

...

One of the many bizarre moments in the questioning by ABC News’s Charles Gibson was when Ms. Palin, the governor of Alaska, excused her lack of international experience by sneering that Americans don’t want “somebody’s big fat résumé maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment where, yes, they’ve had opportunities to meet heads of state.”

...

This nation has suffered through eight years of an ill-prepared and unblinkingly obstinate president. One who didn’t pause to think before he started a disastrous war of choice in Iraq. One who blithely looked the other way as the Taliban and Al Qaeda regrouped in Afghanistan. One who obstinately cut taxes and undercut all efforts at regulation, unleashing today’s profound economic crisis.

In a dangerous world, Americans need a president who knows that real strength requires serious thought and preparation.

 

She's Not Ready

While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail.

How is it that this woman could have been selected to be the vice presidential candidate on a major party ticket? How is it that so much of the mainstream media has dropped all pretense of seriousness to hop aboard the bandwagon and go along for the giddy ride?

For those who haven’t noticed, we’re electing a president and vice president, not selecting a winner on “American Idol.”

Ms. Palin may be a perfectly competent and reasonably intelligent woman (however troubling her views on evolution and global warming may be), but she is not ready to be vice president.

With most candidates for high public office, the question is whether one agrees with them on the major issues of the day. With Ms. Palin, it’s not about agreeing or disagreeing. She doesn’t appear to understand some of the most important issues.
...

John McCain, who is shameless about promoting himself as America’s ultimate patriot, put the best interests of the nation aside in making his incredibly reckless choice of a running mate. But there is a profound double standard in this country. The likes of John McCain and George W. Bush can do the craziest, most irresponsible things imaginable, and it only seems to help them politically.