Blog Buzz: Sarah Palin's Day of Bad News, Barack Obama's Convention Bounce, John McCain's Falling Out With the Media
Questions mount about Palin as VP, and Obama gets a bounce in the polls despite the Palin announcement
Our daily look at stories and topics that are lighting up the Internets:
Palin Drama Piles Up
The flood of news that has recently come in about Sarah Palin's daughter's pregnancy, Palin's links to the Alaskan Independence Party, and an investigation into her office's firing of the state's public safety commissioner, among other things, has liberal bloggers questioning whether Palin was vetted thoroughly (or at all) by John McCain's campaign, and if she will remain on McCain's ticket. Some liberals say the news raises questions about Palin's veep readiness, while others say it reflects more negatively on McCain's judgment. Conservative bloggers are questioning some of the reports and lashing out against the media for focusing on what they think are unimportant issues and for trying to sway voters and attack McCain's judgment.
Obama Stays in the Spotlight, Gets Convention Bounce
New polls are showing a post-convention bounce for Barack Obama despite fears that John McCain's VP announcement would steal the spotlight away from him. Conservative bloggers call the bounce "decent" and think it shows Palin has not moved swing voters. Matthew Yglesias says the polls have little predictive value, but a Huffington Post blogger notes several encouraging findings. TalkLeft wonders if the bounce will hold and if McCain will get a similar one.
McCain and the Media No Longer BFFs
Bloomberg has reported that the "longtime love affair" between John McCain and the national news media is "on the rocks." Conservative bloggers blame the media's "mistreatment of McCain" for the deterioration of the relationship, while liberal bloggers say it's McCain's fault for becoming "reckless" and "acting like an idiotic political novice." McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds's recent interview with CNN's Campbell Brown provides one example of the rocky relationship.
—Gretchen Hannes
Reader Comments
Sarah's ability to lie with such a straight face and with pleasure
I used to like this lady. She calls herself a Christian and lies with such gusto. She actually enjoys it. I realize that supposedly everything is fair in politics, but this negativity turns my stomach. Surely, she must realize she going to hell.
McCain/Palin - leading to destruction
Sarah Palin may seem to have the energy at the rallies and she may be an extrovert person. But that doesn't make her suitable to hold the position that requires someone who really knows and understands the issues at hand. Republicans seem to ignore the historical facts, the blunders made by Reagan that have crippled USA and increased its dependence on foreign oil.they reject the notion of promoting cleaner, alternative energy sources so USA can become self sufficient. Instead of focusing on the terrorism, they shifted their self-contained interests, to fill their pockets with gold, to nations just in the oil-quest and let the terror increase. Every sensible citizen should understand this, and read up the history and then decide. Palin/McCain don't have any plans for falling economy. Just by saying Americans are strong doesn't give you the credit if you don't provide any solutions. McCain's "My friends" doesn't make anyone his friend. It is just a cheap gimmick and knowing they are lacking and lack the judgment for doing good, Sarah Palin and McCain are now resorting to cheap politics, trying to divert the Americans from the actual issues at hand for which they don't want to provide any solution.
Facts About the People causing what lead up to Bailout
Subject: Do Facts Matter?
Do Facts Matter? Recriminations.
By Thomas Sowell
Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."
Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on Election Day, just a few weeks from now.
Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.
The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain - which is astonishing in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.
It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?
Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years - including the present year - denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.
It was Sen. Dodd, Congressman Frank, and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.
Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the president. So did Bush's secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.
Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?
We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.
Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?
Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.
Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.
Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!
The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.
The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions, right after Sen. Christopher Dodd.
But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.
Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.
The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counterattack. They deserve to lose.
But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.
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