Countdown to Election Day: Six Reasons Why Sarah Palin is Unqualified for VP (Part 4)

Reason Number Two:  What You See is Not What you Get 

Only two more days.  Can you believe it?  I'll be there when history is being made.  Yes, I've got tickets.  (sound of fireworks going off).  Unless the Republicans manage to pull off election fraud on a North Korean level, Barak Obama will be our next president.   And I'll be there to help him celebrate.  

In the meantime Sarah Palin is still out there pretending she's got what it takes to be a legitimate candidate for national office.  She doesn't.  Here's another reason why:  what you see is not what you get. 

* * * 

People in Alaska who have watched Palin make her moves since high school speak of the disconnect between the person she appears to be and who she actually is.  That's true of many politicians, of course, but with Palin it's almost pathalogical.  Here are  just a few of the anomolies in her biography:

• She has been an active member of two fundamentalist churches.  To become mayor of Wasila she played the fundamentalist card to the hilt.  Made it a part of her campaign rhetoric - she was out to create a "godly" town.  Her run in with the local librarian was connected to this.  Tried to get her to remove "questionable" books.  When she refused Palin tried to fire her.  The only reason she didn't succeed is because towns people protested.  She was Mrs. Fundamentalist then.  But when she ran for governor, suddenly she was fundamentalist no longer.  Why?  Because she couldn't get elected with a fundamentalist agenda.  Now she declares herself to be a generic Christian.  In other words, don't ask, don't tell.  

         So who is she?  Fundamentalist?  Or not?  

• She likes to portray herself as a maverick opposed to the "old boy" network.  Yet, those who know her best point out that she has played "old boy" politics to the hilt, firing people she doesn't like and replacing them with people she does, whether they're qualified or not.  With Sarah Palin it's an extreme form of political patronage.  

         So who is she?  Maverick politician or Boss Tweed in a skirt?

• Palin loves also to portray herself as an opponent of ear marks and socialism.  In point of  fact she loves both.  It's what has made her such a popular governor.   Whatever the oild companies or tax payers in the lower 48 can do to help her buy her way into Alaskans' good graces she'll do.  

          So again, who is she?  Maverick cost cutter or hands-in-our-pockets           socialist?  The later is closer to the truth.  

    I'll say it again:  Sarah Palin is a hypocrite of the highest order.   With her you never know what you're getting.  Hardly the kind of person we need anywhere near the White House.    

   

Countdown to Election Day: What We Have Learned About Sarah Palin (part 3)

Top Six Reasons Why Sarah Palin is Not Qualified to be Vice President (much less president!)

****

Reason Number Four: She is a serial hypocrite. She can't be trusted.

The word "hypocrisy" comes easily to mind in reviewing what we've learned about Sarah Palin so far. It may be what is most definitive about her.

Here are a few examples:

• Yesterday she launched into a tirade against Obama's supposed inability to meet a security threat, this, the most calming, thoughtful, steady-in-a-storm presidential candidate we've had for a long time.

And who is she? She is a person who touted her national security credentials on the basis of being governor of a state that borders Russia. Never actually met anyone from Russia. But there they are, right next door! She also went to the airport to send off a national guard contingent heading for Iraq. That qualifies her for "commander in chief."

America at crisis with Sarah Palin in the White House (horrors!) may signal the end of the free world. But we can't trust Obama . . .

• She derides Obama (wrongly - as is true with most all of her accusations) of being a "socialist," when, in fact, she presides over the most socialist state economy in our country. But don't take my word for it. You can read it on Fox News: LINK.

The only truly socialist governor in our country attacks Obama for a socialism he has never espoused.

• She touts her qualifications as a crusader against pork. But those who have watched her astonishing rise from small town mayor to governor of a small state, note that she has had her hand out for pork from the beginning. It's one reason she's been so popular. And then there's that bridge she was for before she was against.

She is against ear-marks except when she is for them.

Sarah Palin is a hypocrite. She cannot be trusted.

Countdown to Election Day: What We Have Learned about Sarah Palin

Call this the highlight reel, a chance to go over what we have learned since Sarah Palin made her astonishing appearance on the public stage as John McCain's running mate. We've got six days. Each day I'll put up something we've learned that underscores what was apparent from day one: this woman is not qualified to be vice president much less (God forbid!) president.

THE TOP SIX REASONS WHY SARAH PALIN IS NOT QUALIFIED TO BE VICE PRESIDENT:

Reason Number Six: She abuses power for her own gain

Evidence: Highlights from a letter from woman who has known her since high school.

From Alaska:  The Palin Letter

                        A note to all by Anne Kilkenny
Dear friends,

So many people have asked me about what I know about Sarah Palin in the
last 2 days that I decided to write something up . . .

Basically, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton have only 2 things in
common: their gender and their good looks. :)

Thanks,
Anne

ABOUT SARAH PALIN

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992.
Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a
first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her
father was my child's favorite substitute teacher. I also am on a
first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more
City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the
residents of the city.

-----
Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000
(at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about
670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running
this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been
pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had
gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had
given rise to a recall campaign.
---------

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office 
redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.
------------

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas
or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by
her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the
basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian 
because the Librarian refused to consider removing from
the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents
rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin's
attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew
her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the
Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the “old boy’s club” when she first ran for
Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of "old boys". Palin
fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as
Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, 
creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally 
grateful and fiercely loyal--loyal to the point of abusing their power to
further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the
case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he “intimidated” her,
she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska's top cop has the ring
of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him,
but it's pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he
wouldn't fire her sister's ex-husband, a State Trooper.
--------

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. 
The City Council person who personally escorted her around town
introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council
became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. 
She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who
didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything
publicly about her.


As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens.
Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the
“bridge to nowhere” after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

---------------------

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. 
They call her “Sarah Barracuda” because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness.
Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made
point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah's mother-in-law, a highly respected
member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.
-----------------------------

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a
heartbeat away from being President.

There has to be literally millions of Americans who are more
knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there’s a lot of people who have underestimated her and are
regretting it.



Anne Kilkenny
August 31, 2008

Revisiting 2004: Assessing the Polls

This represents a diversion from the normal topic of this blog. But it struck me that with all the back and forth on the polls - one suggesting McCain gaining, most not, that it would be good to re-visit an assessment that was done after the last presidential election. What they found is that a majority of the polls - the same ones that are showing Obama with commanding leads - were essentially correct within the margin of error.

But don't take my word for it. Check out it out below. And note, if you will, how close it was. The difference now is that Obama is polling far ahead of where Bush was at this time. Believe the numbers.
--------------

From the Pew Research Center:

November 23, 2004

Pre-Election Polls Largely Accurate

Lessons From Campaign '04

Facing an array of new and difficult challenges, the pre-election surveys performed fairly well in predicting the outcome of this month's election. Once again, the final surveys by most national polling organizations fell within the margin of error, in spite of widespread concerns over rising refusal rates, "missing" cell-phone-only voters and supposedly flawed likely voter screens. In the wake of such a demanding election, there are a number of lessons to be drawn from the performance of the polls in Campaign '04:

Follow the Data. The campaign showed the dangers of making a priori judgments about voter opinion. This concern arose, most notably, with the practice of weighting polling data to meet predetermined parameters of party identification. Until recently, this approach has been mostly used by partisan pollsters but it also has been adopted by some media polling organizations.

As we noted in an earlier commentary, weighting results on the basis of party in the same manner that pollsters weight data to meet demographic parameters is misguided for a number of reasons (see "Party Affiliation: What It Is and What It Isn't," Sept. 23, 2004). It represents a fundamental misreading of party identification, which is an attitude that changes over time and not a demographic characteristic.

The election exit poll underscored the problems inherent in weighting by party. According to the exit poll, the electorate had equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats (37% each). That represents a change from the past three presidential elections, when Democrats held a slight edge in party identification. Consequently, pre-election surveys that adjusted the partisan composition of likely voters to the exit poll results from 2000 would have misrepresented the partisan make-up of the actual electorate.

Follow the Data (Part II). Among the staples of conventional wisdom in this campaign was that, in an incumbent election, voters who are undecided in the late stages of the race break overwhelmingly against the incumbent. Historically, this so-called 'incumbent rule' has proven to be predictive.

But this year's exit poll showed that Kerry had only a modest advantage among the late deciders. Among those who decided in the final three days before the election, Kerry led by 53%-44%. That was a far cry from what many analysts and pundits had predicted. Pew's analysis of undecided voters for its final pre-election estimate which was based on statistical modeling and follow-up questioning of the undecideds predicted they would break about evenly with a small advantage for Kerry.

This proved more reliable than history in gauging their intentions. There is no doubt, however, that predicting the vote among the undecideds and estimating the final outcome are among the most formidable challenges confronting pollsters.

Cross-Pressured Voters Are Hard to Read. The national polls were fairly stable during the summer, with most showing the race about even or Kerry with a slight to modest lead. But in the wake of the GOP's successful convention in late August, voter opinion was less stable and much harder to track. Similarly, the polls fluctuated after the three presidential debates; most polls showed Bush with a lead, though they differed over its size.

Much of the movement in the polls came among cross-pressured swing voters. These voters, who still comprised about 14% of the electorate in Pew's final pre-election survey, were not happy with the president yet still could not comfortably support Kerry. And they wreaked havoc with the polls, as Pew Research Center Director Andrew Kohut observed in the New York Times (Oct. 21, 2004):

"The round of national surveys taken after the third presidential debate indicates that the polls are not going to give us a clear picture of who will win the election until the final days of the campaign, if then. This is not because polling no longer works it's because voter opinion is highly unstable."

This turned out to be the case. Pew and Gallup had similar pre-election results before making their final estimates Pew showed Bush with a three-point lead among likely voters (48%-45%), while Gallup had Bush up by two points (49%-47%). The CBS News/New York Times survey also showed Bush with a slight 49%-47% advantage.

Although the three polls ended up in pretty much the same place, they all got there differently. The Pew survey showed Bush gaining some ground since mid-October, while Gallup showed Kerry gaining over the same period. The CBS News/New York Times survey showed voter opinion as more stable. Consequently, one could draw very different conclusions about the direction of the race by looking at these polls over the last few weeks of the campaign.

State Polls: Helpful But... The number of horse race polls has been rising for the past several elections, and this year brought an increasing number of polls in the battleground states. Facing a difficult political terrain by definition, all of these states were closely divided the state surveys had varying degrees of success.

In Michigan, for instance, most of the final week polls showed Kerry with a slight advantage. Of the six polls conducted between Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, the website RealClear Politics found that, on average, they showed Kerry with a 3.5% lead; Kerry won Michigan 51%-48%.

By contrast, the polls did not fare nearly as well in Florida, which Bush won by a fairly comfortable margin (52%-47%). Four polls conducted in the campaign's final weeks had Bush ahead anywhere from a point to as many as eight points; three others showed Kerry leading, with Fox News showing Kerry with a five-point advantage. The main shortcoming of the state polls is that typically they have small samples. But even some that had sizable samples missed the mark in Florida. The highly diverse make-up of the Florida electorate may present special challenges to polling.

Cell Phones: Not a Major Problem Yet. Throughout the campaign, pollsters were frequently asked about the potential bias created by the fact that cell phones are not reached in telephone surveys. A growing number of people, especially young people, are believed to be relying solely on cell phones for phone service.

The exit polls indicated that approximately 7% of all voters are cell phone-only; this group skews heavily toward younger voters, with about half of them (48%) falling under age 30. But although cell-only voters were somewhat more Democratic than the electorate as a whole, the difference was relatively small. Cell-only voters went for Kerry by a margin of 54% to 45%, compared with Bush's 51%-48% advantage among all voters. This difference, and the relatively small size of the cell-only group, was not large enough to create an error in pre-election poll estimates.

Moreover, young voters with and without cell phones were virtually identical politically, suggesting that young people reachable by conventional land-line service remain representative of their cell-only counterparts. About one-in-five (19%) voters under 30 years of age indicated they relied solely on cell phone service. These voters favored Kerry by 58%-41%, close to the advantage he had among the rest of this age cohort (56%-43%).

Countdown: She's Really a Good Girl

More days till the Palin-Biden Debate



Palin's Parents Say She's a Good Girl!

Here's a surprise: Sarah Palin's parents think she's a swell gal and they don't like the media questioning that.

That's what they told CBS news yesterday. And CBS news thought that was actually news-worthy. But isn't that what parents are supposed to say? Wouldn't Biden's mom say the same thing about the dirt the Republicans have been digging up about him, or Obama's parents, if they were still alive, about him? And would CBS news have a special report on that, as well?

Here's what Palin's parents need to understand. When a person runs for the second highest office in the land they open themselves up to an intense scrutiny that is sometimes fair, sometimes not. Too much is at stake for a candidate simply to be allowed to let their parents or their bowling buddies tell us who they are. We need to hear from everyone who knows them and examine everything they have ever done. And because this is politics and not the PTA there will be many who will be out to discredit this candidate because the party whose candidate they oppose will be doing the exact same thing to their candidate.

Information that reporters have dug up on their daughter suggest, in fact, that this is how Sarah Palin has gotten to where she is today - by dissing anyone who gets in her way. She, in other words, is just as good at digging in the dirt as anyone else. While I would rather see no one engage in this kind of politics, its much harder to feel sympathy for someone who does it themselves.

But here's what Palin's parents really need to understand. What the press is doing for the most part is helping us understand whether or not their daughter is qualified for the second most important political position in the most powerful country in the world. This has nothing to do with how nice she is. This has to do with her qualifications for national office. We are willing to believe that she is a good mother and a hard worker. We understand that she is extremely talented and a natural leader. All of these things that her parents wish us to understand about her, we do understand. What we don't understand is why Senator McCain thought she was qualifed for this position.

In the few times she's been allowed to respond to questions with her own thoughts she has evidenced a pitiable lack of knowledge about the very things a vice president needs to know. I don't care how quick a read she is, there is simply no way that she can get up to speed within two or three months. This is not an SAT exam. This is holding responsibility for the administration of the world's most powerful country. No major corporation would even begin to consider someone with insufficient experience or knowledge to be a vice president in their company. Why should we consider putting in office someone with as thin a resume as their daughter?

Mr. and Mrs. Palin: we think you have a fine daughter. She is charming and charismatic and has gone far with grit and determination. She is a gifted leader on the local and state level. She has a wonderful family; a model for working mothers everywhere. But she is not qualified to be vice president of the United States. That more than anything else is what the investigative reporting you are so critical of has determined. She is not suitable for this position. I hope you understand that this is not personal. It's the truth.

The Sarah Palin Effect Effects What?

It's been interesting watching the networks fall over themselves hunting for formerly Democratic white women who are so infatuated with Sarah Palin and angry with Obama for not choosing Clinton that it proves the power of the "Sarah Palin Effect." I saw one they interviewed at a Palin rally this past weekend who claimed to have been a former Democrat, only to throw that into question when she admitted she has never been very political.

The fact that the press has to look so hard to find these people makes one wonder how effective the Palin effect is. From what I've been reading it's had the opposite effect on many women who are appalled by what Palin stands for. The fact that she is also ill prepared for the position, almost embarrassingly so, hardly sells her to Clintonites. There's far too much to swallow here for whatever disappointment they may still feel over Clinton's loss to translate into a vote for McCain. The point is, most intelligent, reasonably well-read women, which is the vast majority of them (as opposed to men, where the "reasonably well-read" part would have to be modified), are not taken in by Sarah Palin. My wife, who fits this categorization, is certainly not alone in being able to spot a phony a mile away.

Let me go out on a limb and make a prediction here. The Palin effect will not be very effective come election time, especially as we find her continuing to stonewall the press as she repeats the same memorized lines over and over and over again. She will, in fact, become an irritant to many people, reminding them (as she reminds me) of that former cheerleader, student council president, miss straight A'ed, perfect toothed, goody two shoes who made high school such a hell for so many people. (She is irritating that way, don't you think?) The effect in this case will be to push more people into the Obama/Biden camp. And the Democrats will win the election. By how much I'm not certain. But they will win.

After the electionSarah will go back to Alaska, but having made so many enemies by lying about the bridge and sending high power Washington lawyers up to smear the reputation of the former police chief and state senators, she will be voted out of office. Finding this door closed and the "not welcome" sign out for the Wasilla mayor's position, she will move with her family to Washington to work as a high power lobbiest for the NRA.

Just see if I'm not right . . .