Seriously - Todd even said so.

OK he didn't actually say that, but that's what the headline in the Seattle Times implies.

Todd did give a 25 page statement to the guy investigating tasergate the jist of which was he though Palin's brother in law was a bad cop, dishonest and a threat to his family, but there was bad blood between Moneghan and Gov. Palin and questions about car seat use exacerbated it.

Overall, despite the crappy headline, Todd comes out looking pretty good from the accounts in the Seattle Times.

In his statement, Palin is unapologetic about his efforts to get Wooten fired, but he says he doesn't think those efforts had anything to do with Monegan's dismissal. He said his understanding is that Monegan lost his job due to a "dispute with the governor and her staff over budget issues and failure to fill trooper vacancies."

In his statement, Palin repeatedly discusses his quest to get Wooten dismissed, but said he never told Monegan to fire Wooten. He said Wooten threatened Palin's father-in-law, bullied people as a trooper, drove in his trooper car after drinking, improperly used his trooper car to shuttle his kids and falsified a workers' comp claim. Wooten was suspended for five days in 2006 after troopers investigated complaints against him.

"I had hundreds of conversations and communications about Trooper Wooten over the last several years with my family, with friends, with colleagues, and with just about everyone I could — including government officials," Palin said.

"I talked about Wooten so much over the years that my wife told me to stop talking about it with her."

He said by taking his concerns to Monegan he was following the instructions regular citizens get for complaining about troopers.

"There is absolutely nothing improper about lodging concerns about Trooper Wooten with Monegan or his predecessor — complaints about state troopers are supposed to go to the commissioner," he said.

source

Posted by: Open Blog at 03:07 PM | Comments (27)
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Posted by: Ace at 02:57 PM | Comments (14)
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By the way-- a PLO spokesman in the seventies, when the PLO wasn't pretending to not be a terrorist organization.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:37 PM | Comments (88)
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Because I'm frickin' tired, man.

Posted by: Ace at 02:32 PM | Comments (43)
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And you know that most people have their preferences set (by default) to block "adult content."

Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (29)
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Undecided.

CLARK [an "undecided" voter at the townhall]: So the Sunday before last, I received a call from the Gallop Poll. They asked a few questions regarding my choice in the Presidential election. They asked who I would vote for. I said most likely I would be voting for Barack Obama. They followed with, “is there any chance that you would change your mind“? I said “Of course anything is possible.” They then asked me as an uncommitted voter would I like to participate in the Town hall debate. I said “Of course!”

MSNBC's First Read found this, but they didn't highlight the part where Clark said he was essentially supporting Obama and then was picked. They decided to flag this part where Mr.Clark speculates McCain is racist because McCain suggested the American public may not be familiar with how exactly Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac worked.

Posted by: Ace at 01:14 PM | Comments (34)
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Yeah... I noticed this myself when I watched the Ayers ad earlier. "No one cares about washed up terrorists?"

Malkin doesn't like it:

Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard reports more details — including something that made me grit my teeth last night when I heard him say it on FNC last night. Quit saying you “don’t care” about Ayers’ terrorist record. Stop that!

In response to a broad question about how Barack Obama “got here” — presumably got his lead — John McCain didn’t name Bill Ayers but spoke of him directly. McCain said “We don’t care about an old washed up terrorist and his wife” who said earlier this decade that he wished they were more successfu. (Several in the crowd chanted: “Yes we do!”)

I realize what he's trying to do but, frankly, it's chickenshit. If you're making an issue of Obama's association with a terrorist, you cannot simultaneously proclaim you're doing nothing of the sort. It doesn't fly.

Further, even if he could somehow find the right rhetoric to make such a have your cake and eat it too case, the media would still accuse him of McCarthyism. Obama's camp and the media (but I repeat myself) will and have accused McCain of racism for saying anything at all about Obama. McCain's attempt to fight off charges of McCarthyism are doomed.

But if it were just a case of futility of gesture, I wouldn't care. The problem is that McCain is -- from his own mouth -- asserting that Ayers doesn't matter. That it is, in Obama's favorite word, a mere "distraction" from the "real issues."

So while McCain is attempting to make an issue of Ayers, he's on record, in the same speeches and commercials, telling the public Oh, by the way, this doesn't matter; disregard it entirely.

Dude, commit. Own it. This half-hearted attempt to save your reputation with the Media Elite you once called friend is going to be the epitaph on your political tombstone.

If you don't think Ayers is worth mentioning, don't mention him.

If you do think this is important, then say so, and stop equivocating in order to appease a Media Elite who despise you and always will.

As Yoda said: "Do, or do not. There is no try."

Either Ayers is a real campaign issue or he's not. If he's not, then stop with the nonsense and focus like a laser on Fannie and Freddie (which, until recently, McCain also didn't want to talk about).

If he is a campaign issue, for the love of everything holy stop telling the public he's not a campaign issue in your own campaign commercials and speeches.

Bart--

And in the words of Jerry Maguire, to help drive home this point:

Help me help you, John McCain.

Vid: This doesn't include the "no one cares about a washed up terrorist" line, which I think came right before.

As you can see, he's saying Ayers doesn't matter per se, but Obama's honesty does.

Well, the trouble with that is if Ayers doesn't matter per se, then Obama, even if he is lying, is lying about a triviality, and the public is quite used to serious lies by politicians. A lie over a triviality they won't even blink at.

If Ayers doesn't matter -- and the only question is Obama's honesty over a trivial detail -- then why not start running hard-hitting ads questioning Obama's commitment to giving up smoking?

I understand the dilemma-- the public doesn't like negative attacks and tend to punish the party making the negative attack almost as much, if not more, than the attacked party.

So politicians would like to have the media raise such questions, thus avoiding bringing the attack up themselves, while getting the benefit of having the negative information out there.

But that isn't going to be the case here, I think it's pretty clear to say. The media will not ask Obama a single difficult question. They will not do John McCain's "dirty work" for him; they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to even do a tiny bit of Hillary's work for her, and she was a Democrat that just shy of half of them supported.

Yes, there's a downside to going negative. I'm afraid McCain doesn't have a choice, though. He needs to roll the dice and gamble that negative campaigning will hurt Obama more, because if he continues letting the situation remain unchanged, he's on a glide-path to a defeat worse than Bob Dole's.

Palin! I was just going to suggest that McCain explain this situation to the public -- that routinely, the media would ask these difficult questions, sparing a candidate of the need to ask them himself. Perhaps that would make it go down easier -- and embarrass the media into asking.

Okay, that last part is insane.

But Palin already sort of did say this:

Sarah Palin, following up, took a shot at the media. "Mainstream media isn't already asking all these questions, you guys have to help us....When will the questions be asked and when will we get answers?!"

Incidentally, the media never asks specific questions of Obama -- which would yield answers that could prove false.

The only people providing "specific answers" are Obama's spokesmen and surrogates-- Axelrod, for example, claiming that Obama didn't know of Ayers' terrorist past before the 1995 coffee that launched his career.

They do that because if they're shown to be lying, the aide can just say he was "misquoted" or "misspoke" or "misunderstood the question."

Thus, they can tell all the lies they want with little danger of it harming the candidate.

The key is to get the candidate himself to commit to an answer -- or equivocate and avoid answering.

But the media won't do that -- they don't want to get Obama on the record about this. They suspect his campaign is lying, but they want to keep those lies viable. And they don't want to expose Obama to the great danger of being caught in a public lie.

No one in the media gets Barack Obama himself to say precisely when he met Bill Ayers. Or precisely when he learned he was a terrorist. Or if Bill Ayers hired him directly for the Annnenberg job, and if so, why he chose a third-year law student to handle $150 million in money.

Obama doesn't want to answer these questions -- and the media knows why.

So they'll instead continue reporting the lies of Axelrod and Plouffle, knowing that if, somehow, the truth gets out, a simple apology and statement that "David Axelrod misspoke" will make the fallout go away.

At his next debate, McCain should -- if he really wants answers -- ask Obama specific questions, and let the public watch him commit to lies, or, more likely, continue dodging the questions.

For Example: Charlie Gibson doesn't ask anything specific about Bill Ayers. Instead, he asks, vaguely -- allowing Obama any sort of general response he likes -- whether McCain is right when he says "the public doesn't know the real Obama" and whether or not he'll have to deal with Ayers again, now that Palin has brought it up.

McCain and Palin are making assertions -- that the Obama-Ayers relationship was closer than Obama admits. Why does not Gibson simply ask about specific details to determine if these assertions are accurate or not?

Posted by: Ace at 12:58 PM | Comments (96)
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So far he's bought a half hour on CBS, and is negotiating for time on Fox and NBC.

It's a paid commercial. Networks have the right to refuse if they like. I kinda doubt they'll refuse The One.

CJ asked, "Why?"

Well, this is far into the future -- five nights before the election -- so he's not doing it in response to the Ayers ads or anything.

He's just making his final case to the public, and, by the way, showing off a capability I doubt McCain has (paying so much for a half hour national campaign ad). Perhaps he's figured he probably won't spend all his millions by election day anyway, and so will leave all his chips on the table that night.

Reposted: A TrollBuster got a little clumsy and deleted the post.

Careful with deletions, guys.

Posted by: Ace at 12:41 PM | Comments (53)
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9% vs. 6%.

Seems kinda true. Howard Stern sent out a guy to interview black Obama supporters about the reasons for their support. The twist? The guy claimed that all of McCain's positions -- and his running mate Sarah Palin -- were actually Obama's.

Everyone seemed pretty jazzed about McCain's positions and running mate, so long as they thought they were endorsing Obama's.

Doesn't prove much. But it is kind of funny.

Thanks to the Bohemian for the Stern link.

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (27)
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So far he's bought a half hour on CBS, and is negotiating for time on Fox and NBC.

It's a paid commercial. Networks have the right to refuse if they like. I kinda doubt they'll refuse The One.

CJ asked, "Why?"

Well, this is far into the future -- five nights before the election -- so he's not doing it in response to the Ayers ads or anything.

He's just making his final case to the public, and, by the way, showing off a capability I doubt McCain has (paying so much for a half hour national campaign ad). Perhaps he's figured he probably won't spend all his millions by election day anyway, and so will leave all his chips on the table that night.

Posted by: Ace at 12:23 PM | Comments (10)
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