Sarah ******* Palin? Follow

Glad somebody caught it

Kind of along the lines of this song.

It's coming out that Camp McCain's claim that Palin killed the Gravina Island Bridge (the "Bridge to Nowhere") because it was wasteful government spending is a load. She killed it because Congress wouldn't pay for enough of it and wanted Alaska to pick up part of the tab. She hoped to gain extra funding for it from Congress.But then, with nationwide mockery of the project, Congress cut some of the funding for the project and increased Alaska's portion of the project from $80mil to nearly $330mil. Palin was really hoping for a bigger hand-out than that...That same quote is on Wiki under the bridge name but I pulled it off the State News Wire on LexisNexis.

Edited, Aug 30th 2008 8:28pm by Jophiel

Woohoo! I think that's the first post I ever no-rated!

Imo, I don't think McCain could have picked a worse VP (from the viable candidates...obviously picking Louis Farrakhan would be worse).

She brings nothing to the table that many of the other choices could have like experience, or even being from a borderline state. It's obvious that he's strictly trying to "mix things up" and trying to grab women voters. I think it's going to backfire on him because many women are going to feel like McCain thinks that most women aren't smart enough or don't care about the issues, but only that his running mate has a ******.

The first numbers on Palin are out.

According to Rasmussen, Palin hasn't shifted the numbers much among the converted, among Republicans, 33% say she's made them more likely. Among Democrats, she's made them 33% less likely. It translated to a 1 point gain in the polls for both McCain and Obama.

But among undecideds polled by Rasmussen, 6% said that Palin made them more likely to vote for McCain, 31% said less likely, 49% said no impact and 15% are unsure. You need access to the demographic crosstabs to get to that info.

Given that McCain needs to win a majority of the undecideds to poll higher than Obama, this isn't great news.

Gallup doesn't offer demographics for its responses but only 18% of voters said that Palin makes them more likely to vote McCain. Given that 42% of voters are already voting more McCain and McCain's percentages have only risen 1 point in the past day, it's probably safe to guess that the bulk of that 18% was already in the "vote McCain" catagory. 11% said "less likely" and nearly 70% said his choice doesn't matter.

However, only 39% of voters said she's qualified to be president, the second lowest ranking for a VP candidate in recent elections. Only Quayle scored lower with 32%. Every other nominee has at least broken the 50% mark with an average of 54% from Quayle-Edwards (2004). Biden has a 57% ranking in case you're curious.

So undecided voters don't like her much, the majority of voters think she's way underqualified and she hasn't shifted McCain's numbers much. Sounds like she's paying off big time.

Edited, Aug 31st 2008 4:42pm by Jophiel

Huh?

One thing I'm curious about is how the "The Republicans can never do any wrong" camp (i.e. Hannity, Limbaugh, etc) are spinning this VP choice.

Anyone know? I haven't been watching Fox News or anything like that this week.

A little info on Palin for those who don't know. TY Wiki

As mayor of Wasilla, Palin reduced the mayoral salary and reduced property taxes by 40%.

During her second term as mayor, Palin hired the Anchorage-based lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh to lobby for earmarks for Wasilla. The effort was led by Steven Silver, a former chief of staff for Senator Ted Stevens and it secured nearly $27 million in earmarked funds. The earmarks included $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs, and $15 million for a rail project linking Wasilla and the ski resort community of Girdwood.

Governor Murkowski appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she chaired the Commission from 2003 to 2004, and also served as Ethics Supervisor.Palin resigned in January 2004 in protest over what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Republican members.

After resigning, Palin filed formal complaints against the state Republican Party's chairman, Randy Ruedrich, and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes. She accused Ruedrich, one of her fellow commissioners, of doing work for the party on public time and working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.

Palin has strongly promoted oil and natural gas resource development in Alaska. She also helped pass a tax increase on oil company profits. Palin has followed through on plans to create a new sub-cabinet group of advisers to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions within Alaska. When asked about climate change after becoming Senator McCain's presumptive running mate, she stated that it would "affect Alaska more than any other state", but she added, "I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."

Shortly after taking office, Palin rescinded 35 appointments made by Murkowski in the last hours of his administration, including that of his former chief of staff James "Jim" Clark to the Alaska Natural Gas Development Authority.

In March 2007, Palin presented the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act as the new legal vehicle for building a natural gas pipeline from the state's North Slope. This negated a deal by the previous governor to grant the contract to a coalition including BP. Only one legislator, Representative Ralph Samuels, voted against the measure,and in June, Palin signed it into law.

In response to high oil and gas prices, and the resulting state government budget surplus, Palin proposed giving Alaskans $100-a-month energy debit cards. She also proposed providing grants to electrical utilities so that they would reduce customers' rates. She subsequently dropped the debit card proposal, and in its place she proposed to send each Alaskan $1,200 from the windfall surplus resulting from high oil prices.

Shortly after becoming governor, Palin canceled a contract for the construction of an 11-mile (18 km) gravel road outside Juneau to a mine. This reversed a decision made in the closing days of the Murkowski administration.[65] She also followed through on a campaign promise to sell the Westwind II jet purchased (on a state government credit account, against the wishes of the Legislature) by the Murkowski administration for $2.7 million in 2005. In August 2007, the jet was sold on eBay for $2.1 million.

Palin is a strong woman and doesn't take crap from anyone. I don't think you'll see her crying about things being too hard on her like we saw with Hillary. She was an excellent choice for VP and an excellent choice for those who still want a woman in the white house. She is bi-partisan and will lay down justice on either side of the table as well as work with both sides. Aside from that...have you seen her? Pretty Hot, came in 2nd in Miss Alaska pageant. It's like a breath of fresh air to see her after looking at old white guys and well, Obama...gotta admit he is kinda funny looking with his big dumbo ears and kermit the frog face. If you don't like her that's np in 4 years the democrats will have a female, lesbian, handicapped, 1/2black, 1/2 hispanic, belemic nominee...oh, did I mention she will also have cancer and aids. I don't know what us republicans will do then...guess we'll just have to stick to old white guys and who knows, maybe we can convert Oprah?





Edited, Sep 3rd 2008 3:57pm by Oneson

Thank you for copy/pasting Wikipedia at us.

Hey, check out the Palin entry history. It was mysteriously punched-up with a bunch of pro-Palin stuff about an hour before the official VP announcement

For someone who's apparently been nominated only for her tits, you guys sure are obsessed with Palin.

I've been really busy that last few days (last week actually), but it's striking to me how rabidly you're following every tidbit of polling data, looking for evidence that Palin really doesn't help McCain at all.

She hasn't spoken yet. Wait and see what the polls do over the next couple days. Right now, she's a name and a sex and not much else to most Americans. If she nails her speech tonight they'll see what many of the Conservative pundits have been seeing and talking about for months and you may just see significant shifts in those numbers.

She's polling even in terms of impact on the ticket as a complete unknown. Not surprising really. She's unknown still. Looking at polling data about her right now is kinda pointless. Let the American people see her give a speech or two before toting out the poll numbers...

We're fascinated by tits.You're acting as though I haven't been reading polls for months? Hi, are you new here?Of course she'll "nail it". She's been doing nothing for a fortnight but practicing it. She'll give it to a 100% friendly crowd who'll applaud at every line no matter what she says*. What'll make or sink her is how she does when she's not wound up and put on the display shelf.


*Did you catch the crowd last night cheering the idea of losing the Supreme Court for a generation before they realized that that wasn't an applause line?