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By Jonathan Haidt $28.95
$15.64
$22
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“Mosaic Intelligence Report” host Jamal Dajani is distinctly unimpressed with the level of knowledge about the Middle East displayed by Sarah Palin and Joe Biden during Thursday night’s vice presidential debate.
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All right, now this is getting ridiculous. None other than Ryan Seacrest has managed to insert himself into the political mix by scoring a phone interview with Hillary Clinton on his radio show Friday. What’ll it be next, the Obamas and the Bidens sit down with the preternaturally perky Mary Hart on “Entertainment Tonight?” Oh, wait ... never mind.
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Did they deliver? That was the question coming from the Democratic and Republican camps after Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin did battle at the vice presidential debate in St. Louis on Thursday night. Here’s the full debate in video—tell us what you think about how the candidates handled themselves and represented their respective tickets.
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 AP photo / Don Emmert, pool
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By Bill Boyarsky — Gov. Sarah Palin survived Thursday night’s debate, much to the disappointment of Democrats who hoped she would crumble as she did in her interview with Katie Couric. But she ducked tough questions, gave canned answers, tried to smile her way out of tough spots and cheerfully distorted Sen. Barack Obama’s record.
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 AP photo / Charles Dharapak
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Looks like John McCain and his camp have decided to cut bait in Michigan after their efforts to win over voters in the Midwestern state didn’t quite pan out as they’d hoped. Instead, as Politico reports, McCain’s team is focusing on other important states like Florida and Ohio.
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 AP photo / Henny Ray Abrams
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Tina Fey, in character again as Sarah Palin for last weekend’s “Saturday Night Live,” made light of how the Republican vice presidential candidate was “literally” embraced by “a couple of them Pakistani guys” she met at the United Nations last week. Unfortunately for Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, though, the prayer leader of Islamabad’s Red Mosque isn’t laughing about Zardari’s encounter with Palin last Thursday.
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Calling Sarah Palin’s recent interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric “the last straw,” Newsweek editor and columnist Fareed Zakaria tells Wolf Blitzer on Monday’s episode of “The Situation Room” that it’s not a matter of Palin not giving the right answer when faced with a complex question about the economy or foreign policy, “it’s that she clearly does not understand the question.”
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You might think you’re watching a movie trailer when the voice-over kicks in on this promo spot for the Wasilla Assembly of God’s “Master’s Commission,” which a member of Sarah Palin’s former church describes as an “intense discipleship training program.” Although darkness sets in and seems to never let up in America’s northernmost state, the booming voice proclaims, “God has a destiny for the state of Alaska” ... and the world!
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“Saturday Night Live” alumna Tina Fey returned once again to fulfill her comedic duty on the Sept. 27 episode of NBC’s comedy show, spoofing Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s one-on-one interview with CBS anchor Katie Couric earlier in the week. Fey’s fellow “SNL” comedian Amy Poehler dropped her Hillary Clinton act to play Couric in this clip.
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 AP photo / Madalyn Ruggiero
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By Bill Boyarsky — In Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy, the fact that he is African-American has seemed to be an obstacle that could be overcome with a good campaign, a few breaks and the issues turning his way. That’s what is happening now.
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Here’s a sound bite for the ages: “The Shock Doctrine” author Naomi Klein was one of the panelists on the Sept. 19 episode of “Real Time With Bill Maher,” and when the conversation inevitably turned to Sarah Palin, Klein pronounced the GOP VP nominee to be “basically Bush in drag.”
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During a campaign stop in Blaine, Minn., on Friday, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin lamented that neither she nor Hillary Clinton would be able to attend next week’s anti-Iran rally in New York City and vowed that she and GOP presidential hopeful John McCain “will not waver in our commitment” to prevent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from obtaining nuclear weapons and potentially starting “a second Holocaust.”
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Thank goodness there was Fox News host Sean Hannity to fill the excruciating void between Sarah Palin’s big interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson and her upcoming one-on-one with CBS’ Katie Couric. On Wednesday he sat down with Palin for the benefit of Fox’s conservative-friendly audience.
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 cappymcgarrshow.com
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Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel has openly questioned whether Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has the experience or qualifications to effectively serve as president, the Omaha World-Herald reported Thursday. Also, Hagel’s not buying the argument that Alaska’s proximity to Russia gives Palin any particular edge or special insights about U.S.-Russian relations.
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Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren seems a bit flustered when confronted with the square-jawed, fur-lined manliness of Alaska’s “first dude,” Todd Palin, in this clever TPM montage of Van Susteren’s interview with Gov. Sarah Palin’s snow-machine-driving man of few words.
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John McCain’s campaign would like to nominate—who else?— John McCain and Sarah Palin as just the ticket to get Americans out of financial crisis, claiming they’ll fight “special interest giveaways” on Wall Street(?!), cut taxes and, of course, drill, baby, drill!
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Missing from Republican VP hopeful Sarah Palin’s speeches during her recent homecoming visit to Alaska were two talking points she had used in heavy rotation before, but they were back in her script once she returned to talk to “lower 48” audiences, which, as Fox News (!) points out, may not be familiar with the relevant back stories.
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On Friday’s episode of “Left, Right & Center,” show regulars Matt Miller, Robert Scheer and Tony Blankley weigh in about the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac crisis, the fate of Lehman Brothers and Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin’s one-on-one with ABC’s Charlie Gibson.
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 gopconvention2008.com
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Although critics are still accusing the “elite media” of unfairly scrutinizing Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, less than two months remain before the Nov. 4 election to suss out who she is and what she stands for. Saturday’s New York Times article on Palin will no doubt draw more protests, but the Times’ findings are worth voters’ close consideration before they head to the polling booths.
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On Friday, ABC aired another set of excerpts of the interviews of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by the journalist her team picked to pose the questions, Charlie Gibson. In these clips, Palin appears slightly more relaxed than she was the previous day, but some of her answers still were fuzzy, especially when it came to whether her personal views on certain issues would influence her policy decisions.
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ABC News’ big-get interview series with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin continued with another installment on “Nightline” Thursday evening, during which reporter Charlie Gibson pushed Palin on her position on global warming, and Palin pushed back.
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 AP photo / Gerald Herbert
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By John Dean — Does anyone believe that if John McCain were president and had selected Gov. Sarah Palin under the 25th Amendment to fill a vacancy in the vice presidency Congress would have confirmed her? Not likely. In fact, it is even less likely that McCain would have even attempted to do so, for he would have embarrassed himself.
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To his credit, ABC’s Charlie Gibson posed some practical and pertinent questions in the first installment of his interview with Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, and he didn’t let her off the hook when she conflated “national security” with “energy independence.” Updated
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On the seventh anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Link TV’s Mosaic Intelligence Report takes stock and asks some key questions: Has President Bush’s “war on terror” made any progress? Has al-Qaida diminished or grown in strength?
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Politicians, take note: “Local” interviews are no longer all that local. In this interview, Rob Caldwell, anchor for WCSH in Portland, Maine, asks Republican presidential nominee John McCain about his running mate Sarah Palin’s credentials when it comes to “national security, diplomacy, foreign policy” and “the fight against Islamist extremism.”
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In this clip from the sit-down session with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson and Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin, Gibson asks Palin to elaborate upon a statement she made earlier this year about the war in Iraq: “Our national leaders are sending them [U.S. military members] out on a task that is from God.” Here’s her response, in which she claims she was paraphrasing President Abraham Lincoln.
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 abcnews.go.com
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Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin is finally answering questions from a journalist in ABC’s three-part interview series with chosen reporter Charles Gibson. Palin comes out of the gate with guns blazing, rewriting history about the Georgia-Russia conflict and considering the possibility of a U.S. war with Russia in the first episode, airing Thursday.
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Thespian and concerned citizen Matt Damon would like some answers about this Sarah Palin person we keep hearing about whose unlikely career arc might just catapult the bouffant-wearing hockey mom from the snowy wilds of Wasilla, Alaska, into an international staring match with tiger-slaying Russian judo master Vladimir Putin.
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 AP photo / Carolyn Kaster
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By Robert Scheer — Ignorance is bliss, which perhaps explains Gov. Sarah Palin being so confidently wrong about the root cause of the federalization of most of the nation’s mortgage market. But what is Sen. John McCain’s excuse?
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 gopconvention2008.com
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As governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin is entitled to bill the state for certain expenses she incurs on the job, such as travel (for herself and her family), food and lodging. That said, The Washington Post has delved into her records and discovered that Palin “billed taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office,” charging per diem expenses intended to cover costs related to travel.
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Could it be that Republican former presidential contender Rudy Giuliani made a couple of passing references to terrorism during his speech at last week’s Republican National Convention? Perhaps he did, and you can see them, along with other key moments from the RNC, in this priceless exercise in video editing by HuffPo’s “23/6” division.
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 AP photo: Charlie Neibergall / Charles Dharapak
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Hillary Clinton is doing another campaign push for Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, but she’s apparently being careful not to take on Republican VP hopeful Sarah Palin in any way that might signal “cat fight” to those media types watching for any hint of such a conflict between Clinton and Palin.
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 factcheck.org
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With all the spin and rumor-mongering going on this election season, it’s a good thing there’s FactCheck.org to do some much-needed investigation, because those inflated claims and scurrilous smears only work when voters don’t do their homework.
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With its latest ad, “No Maverick,” Barack Obama’s team takes aim at John McCain’s self-styled rabble-rousin’ outsider image, offering a few examples of why the “maverick” line doesn’t work for the Arizona senator or his new sidekick from Alaska.
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“Let’s give the Lord a hand for our governor,” says Ed Kalnin, senior pastor at the Wasilla Assembly of God Church, after Sarah Palin holds forth about the role of God’s will in her work as Alaska’s governor in this widely circulated clip from Palin’s visit to her former church last June.
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Last week marked the official debut of Sarah Palin, now John McCain’s running mate, at the Republican National Convention—not to mention the Alaska governor’s introduction to most of the country. How do her accomplishments stack up? Will she be, as “LRC” co-host Tony Blankley wonders, “gold dust or Kryptonite” for the McCain campaign?
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According to McCain campaign strategist Nicole Wallace, it doesn’t matter if Sarah Palin talks to the press because Palin can make “her own points” in her speeches, directly to the American people, as she did in St. Paul last week. “Who cares if she can talk to Time magazine?” Wallace asks Jay Carney of, yes, Time magazine in this clip.
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 AP photo / Susan Walsh
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By Bill Boyarsky — What had been unexpected by the faithful at the Republican National Convention was McCain’s choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as the vice presidential nominee. McCain’s decision was cited as an example of his willingness to take a chance, to gamble everything on a hunch. It was much more than that.
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Frenetic comic Robin Williams didn’t wait for David Letterman’s cue to kick off his routine on “The Late Show” Thursday—he was already well into it within five seconds of sitting down, leaving a blinking Letterman trying to keep up as Williams went to town on the RNC crowd, starting with vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and on up to Karl Rove.
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 AP photo / Jose Luis Magana
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In Friday’s New York Times article about whether Hillary Clinton will go to the mat against Sarah Palin, a woman delegate at the GOP convention says, “I just bet Hillary was watching Sarah’s speech on TV Wednesday night and cheering, ‘You go, girl!’ ” Really?
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 gov.state.ak.us
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Apparently undeterred by Sarah Palin’s challenging stance from the RNC podium Wednesday night, The Boston Globe and other media outlets went about their business of vetting Palin’s past, as with any other public figure who aspires to play a major leadership role on the world stage. As it turns out, Palin’s own experience on said world stage has thus far been rather limited.
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Consider this the only gender-bias-in-the-media primer you’ll ever need, and a handy reminder to the Bill O’Reilly and Dick Morris types (not to mention Monsieur Rove) that gender bias cuts both ways—and sometimes, as Jon Stewart points out, the same people do the cutting without seeming to remember just a few short weeks later.
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John McCain’s wife, Cindy, sat down with CBS News anchor Katie Couric for an interview that aired Wednesday night, pledging to Couric that the VP vetting process was indeed thorough and sounding her enthusiasm for Sarah Palin. She said she agrees with the Alaska governor about the need to teach intelligent design in the schools but disagrees that abortion should be prohibited even in cases of incest or rape.
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 cafepress.com
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The GOP merchandising machine is kicking into gear following VP nominee Sarah Palin’s Wasilla-to-Washington pep rally on Wednesday night, angling to compete with those ubiquitous Shepard Fairey Obama T-shirts and such by offering “Sarah Is My Homegirl” cotton separates and, yes, “Wonder Palin” thong underwear.
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 AP photo / Stephan Savoia
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By Robert Scheer — Welcome to the People’s Republic of Alaska, where every resident this year will get a $3,200 payout, thanks in no small measure to the efforts of Sarah Palin, the state’s Republican governor.
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 mshistory.k12.ms.us /klin.com
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It was a lineup designed to bring women at the Republican National Convention ever forward and onward into the year 1800, but alas, Sarah Palin couldn’t make it.
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Here’s the hopeful commercial the McCain campaign recently released to introduce Sarah Palin to voters around the country, featuring a hopeful soundtrack and bittersweet reminders of a more hopeful time in the McCain presidential campaign—as in, five days ago—when Palin was really, really new to McCain too!
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 AP photo / Jeff Roberson
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John McCain wanted to shake things up with his unexpected nomination of an unknown “outsider,” at least when it came to the political scene in Washington—but by Tuesday, as reports about issues from Sarah Palin’s home life and professional past circulated in the media, some McCain allies (and certainly many detractors) wondered how much his unconventional move might cost his campaign.
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 AP photo / Stephan Savoia
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Last Friday, as John McCain introduced his running mate to the world, Gov. Sarah Palin characterized herself as a scrappy outsider who wasn’t afraid to buck the system when she stridently challenged construction of a $223 million bridge project in Alaska, which she sardonically called “that Bridge to Nowhere.”
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Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama sat down for a “60 Minutes” interview with his vice presidential pick, Joe Biden, to talk about why he chose Biden and what he thinks about rival John McCain’s choice, Gov. Sarah Palin, for whom Obama has a couple of nice words before noting that she “subscribes to John McCain’s agenda.”
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