Sarah Palin’s Newsweek Moustache: Tempest in a Teapot

Newsweek Cover

Fox News (AKA Faux News) and Republican pundits/bloggers seem to be having a hissy fit over the recent cover of Newsweek Magazine featuring Sarah Palin for their main story “The Palin Problem”. Why? Because Newsweek didn’t retouch, airbrush, or photoshop the picture of Palin, and her facial flaws, including a faint moustache, are showing.

Fox (Faux) seems to forget that Newsweek is not a fashion magazine. It’s not a beauty magazine. It is a NEWS magazine. I don’t expect fake news nor do I expect fake pictures in a publication like Newsweek. But apparently, Fox (Faux) likes its photos retouched, in the same manner it appears to handle its coverage of the news.

But let’s think this situation through. If, for example, I knew that I was going to have my picture taken for a magazine – or for any reason for that matter - I would be sure to have on my makeup and make sure that I don’t have any hair on my face that I don’t want there. Sure, if someone zooms in up close they may see imperfections. But that’s just the way it is. If Sarah is not bright enough or concerned enough to make sure that she doesn’t take care of a little moustache hair before a photo shoot, then this whole thing is of her own doing.

Fox (Faux) News wants to have all their news retouched so it is flattering to their candidate of choice. That’s their way. They say they are fair and balanced; I say they are consistently UNfair and IMbalanced. Sure, they try to bring on a talking head or two every now and then that supports the other side or a differing opinion, but they frequently, if not always, try their best to argue with the person for having an opinion counter to whatever agenda Fox (Faux) is pushing that day. In fact, being a Democratic talking head on Fox (Faux) News is akin to being a "red shirt" on Star Trek - you know when you get to the alien planet, you'll be the one who gets killed by the aliens, instead of the stars of the show.

In case you didn’t see it, here’s the video of the Fox (Faux) News meltdown over Sarah Palin’s moustache. It’s pretty pathetic. With all that’s going on with the economy right now, I guess that a little facial hair on a woman is more important to Fox (Faux).





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McCain: “My Fellow Prisoners”; Is His Mind Going?

Yes, you read that right. John McCain had a bit of a slip-up when, in a speech today in Bethlehem PA along with Sarah Palin, he referred to the American people as his “fellow prisoners.”

Here’s the clip, and the transcript of the segment of the speech if you don’t believe me. I think it speaks for itself. But, after seeing a few slip ups he made several months ago where Joe Lieberman, standing behind him like a puppet master, had to help correct John when he got confused, I worry that John McCain is of sound mind. No one seemed to correct him this time, though. I guess Lieberman has better things to do?

Let’s not forget in the debate last night when he referred to Barack Obama as “that one.” That probably was no slip of the tongue; I think he meant that to be demeaning. That clip is also below.

I think the pressure is getting to him. It almost reminds me of the movie “2001 A Space Odyssey” where the Hal 9000 computer is having his memory chips pulled, and he says, “My mind is going…”

My Fellow Prisoners




"You and I together will confront the $10 trillion debt the federal government has run up and balance the federal budget by the end of my term in office. Across this country, this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners and the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent."

McCain Calls Obama “That One”


Here’s McCain being corrected by Lieberman, back in the spring, just as a memory refresher:



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Keating Five Documentary Released by Obama Campaign

As I mentioned earlier today, the Obama Campaign released today a 13-minute documentary that covers John McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five scandal. The scandal involved a huge failure of some savings and loans, where it was believed some elected officials, McCain being one of them, were complicit in the fraud involving these S&Ls along with financier Charles Keating.

It is important to note that while John McCain was cleared in the actual scheme, the Ethics Committee did not approve of his behavior in the matter. Here’s a brief entry from Wikipedia that summarizes the Ethics Committee’s take on McCain:

The Ethics Committee ruled that the involvement of McCain in the scheme was also minimal, and he too was cleared of all charges against him. McCain was criticized by the Committee for exercising "poor judgment" when he met with the federal regulators on Keating's behalf. The report also said that McCain's "actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him....Senator McCain has violated no law of the United States or specific Rule of the United States Senate."

But the video explains a little more of McCain’s involvement, which does seem to cofirm that John McCain’s judgment was certainly poor.

If you have the time to spare, watch, or simply listen to the YouTube video below. There is also a scathing article from the 1989 Phoenix News, which referred to McCain as “The Most Reprehensible of the Keating Five” (excerpt follows)“ :

You're John McCain, a fallen hero who wanted to become president so desperately that you sold yourself to Charlie Keating, the wealthy con man who bears such an incredible resemblance to The Joker.

Obviously, Keating thought you could make it to the White House, too.

He poured $112,000 into your political campaigns. He became your friend. He threw fund raisers in your honor. He even made a sweet shopping-center investment deal for your wife, Cindy. Your father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was cut in on the deal, too.

Nothing was too good for you. Why not? Keating saw you as a prime investment that would pay off in the future.

So he flew you and your family around the country in his private jets. Time after time, he put you up for serene, private vacations at his vast, palatial spa in the Bahamas. All of this was so grand. You were protected from what Thomas Hardy refers to as "the madding crowd." It was almost as though you were already staying at a presidential retreat.

Like the old song, that now seems "Long ago and far away."

Since Keating's collapse, you find yourself doing obscene things to save yourself from the Senate Ethics Committee's investigation. As a matter of course, you engage in backbiting behavior that will turn you into an outcast in the Senate if you do survive.

They say that if you put five lobsters into a pot and give them a chance to escape, none will be able to do so before you light the fire. Each time a lobster tries to climb over the top, his fellow lobsters will pull him back down. It is the way of lobsters and threatened United States senators.

And, of course, that's the way it is with the Keating Five. You are all battling to save your own hides. So you, McCain, leak to reporters about who did Keating's bidding in pressuring federal regulators to change the rules for Lincoln Savings and Loan.

When the reporters fail to print your tips quickly enough--as in the case of your tip on Michigan Senator Donald Riegle--you call them back and remind them how important it is to get that information in the newspapers.

The story of "the Keating Five" has become a scandal rivaling Teapot Dome and Watergate. The outcome will be decided, not in a courtroom, but probably on national television.

Those who survive will be the sociopaths who can tell a lie with the most sincere, straight face. You are especially adept at this.


It goes on, and you can read the rest at this link.

I have very strong recollections, and also strong feelings about the whole Keating Five matter. One of the Savings and Loans in which my husband had our life savings and checking accounts with were temporarily closed when the scandal first broke, amid concerns that certain S&Ls outside the failure of Lincoln Saving and Loan were somehow connected and also possibly not solvent. Imagine not having access to any of your money for even a few days, when you are unable to write a check or withdraw cash. It is unsettling to say the least. And while McCain was cleared of the actual fraud, just in the fact that he was called out for his poor judgment tells me that he did have some involvement in this mess. While it technically wasn’t fraud, it seems like he stepped on the line.

So, if you have time to watch or listen to the video, you should do so. If not, take a moment to read some of the articles at the link I’ve provided here and just read a bit to get a flavor for the magnitude of this mess. Yes, it happened long ago. But to me, it is paints a picture of the real John McCain.





If you have trouble loading the video above, it can also be viewed at the following link from Keatingeconomics.com .

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McCain Campaign: The Smell of Desperation

Probably one of the lowest blows to come out of the McCain campaign is Sarah Palin's accusation where she attempts to create a connection with Barack Obama and a former member of the Weather Underground, William Ayers. But this tactic may backfire.

According to CBS News:

“Before her campaign plane took off for a Sunday fundraiser here, CBS News asked Sarah Palin to respond to an analysis by the Associated Press that concluded her attempts to establish a friendship between Barack Obama and Weather Underground member William Ayers were “unsubstantiated and carried a racially tinged subtext that John McCain himself may come to regret.”

"The Associated Press is wrong,” Palin said. “The comments are about an association that has been known but hasn't been talked about, and I think it’s fair to talk about where Barack Obama kicked off his political career, in the guy's living room.”

Palin was referring to an event that Ayers hosted for Obama early in the Illinois senator’s career. But the AP notes, “No evidence shows they were ‘pals’ or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers hosted a political event for Obama early in his career.”

Associated Press goes on to say that Palin’s comments are “a deliberate attempt to smear Obama” and “exaggerated at best if not outright false”

With McCain rapidly losing ground in the polls in swing states, apparently he is becoming desperate by trying to make this an issue. What is even more pathetic is that McCain now seems to be relegating his dirty work to the inexperienced newbie Sarah Palin, who at this point seems to be willing to parrot anything that she’s told by the campaign.

The Obama campaign isn’t taking any of this lying down. Later today, the Obama campaign will be releasing a 13-minute documentary about the Keating Five scandal called "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis". I have some very personal recollections of the Keating scandal because one of my banks was affected by it, so I followed the issue very closely when it happened. Frankly, I don’t think John McCain should be trying to point fingers about a person’s association with someone, as flimsy as it was, when McCain’s own past has the Keating scandal.

On the lighter side, if you haven’t seen the Saturday Nigh Live version of the Biden/Palin debate, here it is:




PS: I can't stand MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, but I have to admit his fact checking of Sarah Palin's statements at the debate was very interesting. The first two minutes gives you most of it. Watch and listen:



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McCain Pulled Out of Michigan Long Ago

McCain and Palin in Michigan (AP Photo)

The news is all over the place about John McCain shifting his campaign resources away from the state of Michigan, essentially ceding the state to Obama. This is also a decision, according to CNN, on which his VP running mate, Sarah Palin, disagrees.

The fact is, John McCain mentally pulled out of Michigan in January of 2008 during the primary, when he told Michigan voters that the lost jobs in Michigan "aren't coming back." He lost Michigan to Mitt Romney in the primaries, seeing that voters probably weren’t buoyed by McCain’s defeatist tone. So it should be no shock now to McCain that he can’t win Michigan. After all, he basically told the people in that state in January that there was nothing he could do to help them to recover from the job loss.

This could come back to bite him in other states being hit hard by job loss. One state comes to mind: my own state of Ohio, which has been hit very hard with job loss in the last 8 years. McCain made an appearance in Youngstown in April, where the message was the same as it was in Michigan - jobs are gone. An excerpt from a New York Times article titled McCain: These Jobs are Gone, Gone, Gone says it very plainly:

Is NAFTA a four-letter word?

No, Senator John McCain told an Ohio voter on Tuesday, he didn’t think so.

“I am prone on occasion to make a mistake,’’ the presumptive Republican nominee told Jack O’Connell, a retired labor leader, at a town hall-style meeting at Youngstown State University. Still, he said, “last time I checked, NAFTA has five letters, not four.’’

Mr. McCain was responding to a question from Mr. O’Connell, who called NAFTA, or the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement, “a bad four letters,’’ then asked Mr. McCain what he thought of the deal. Mr. McCain’s answer made the crowd laugh, even if his more substantive response –- the overall result of NAFTA has been “a benefit to our country’’ — was politically unpalatable to many Ohio voters who blame the trade deal for lost American jobs.

Nonetheless, Mr. McCain kept up his free-trade-is-good message in this economically depressed city, a contrast to his Democratic competitors, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who both have called for renegotiating NAFTA. Mr. McCain also repeated his message that lost manufacturing jobs would not return, a position that polls show may have helped him lose the Michigan Republican primary in January to Mitt Romney.

But Mr. McCain, who compared the struggles of Youngstown to his own back-from-the-dead campaign, insisted that in the end workers would be better off through retraining and education programs in technology he has promised them as president.

“I can’t tell you that these jobs are ever going to come back to this magnificent part of the country,’’ Mr. McCain told another questioner, Sam Carbon, a student at Youngstown, who asked Mr. McCain about how he planned to save American jobs. “But I will commit to giving these workers a second chance. They need it, they deserve it. I know that’s small comfort to you, but I can’t look you in the eye and tell you those steel mills are coming back.’’


Now, he’s giving voters in Michigan the “I don’t care about you” attitude by pulling out of the state because he can’t win there. He also doesn't have the campaign money to even try. I have a feeling that Ohio voters who live in what is now considered a swing state leaning toward Obama won’t take kindly to McCain’s flip and thoughtless comments about job loss in Michigan or Ohio.

The old saying goes – “Never say never.” While McCain thinks that some states have permanently lost jobs and that they will never return, I don’t see that as a hard fact. Just looking in the city of Cleveland, the city is trying very hard to recover lost manufacturing jobs from the steel and automotive industries by gaining new jobs in medicine. In fact, Cleveland is one of the best places to be in the world if one needs medical treatment, and medical field continues to grow here by leaps and bounds. While it hasn’t made up for all the “blue-collar” job loss, it certainly has helped to slow the complete decline of jobs in the area.

So while John sees no hope, I see a chance for these areas hit my manufacturing job loss to reinvent themselves to attract a new kind of employment boom, in things like medicine, renewable energy, technology, etc. Some of those industries could very will bring some blue-collar jobs back that McCain says are gone for good. And NAFTA probably does need a second look, and changes to that could bring even more blue-collar jobs back, but McCain doesn't seem to think NAFTA is broken. Things do not have to be hopeless…well, except maybe to John McCain, who has no real vision for the future.


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Palin’s Debate Performance: Style over Substance

After watching the Vice Presidential debate with Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, the differences in each candidate became obvious.


Biden’s “bar” to measure his performance was set very high.
Palin’s “bar” to measure her performance was set very low.

Biden would focus on the issues and John McCain.
Palin would focus on the cameras and appealing to Joe six-pack and hockey moms.

Biden’s responses seem to be effortless and drawn from experience.
Palin’s responses seemed rehearsed (almost memorized) and shallow.

Biden would smile and laugh, seeming very loose and comfortable.
Palin would wink at the camera, as if there was an inside joke going on.

Biden respected his opponent’s title and addressed her as “Governor”.
Palin asked immediately if she could call him "Joe".

Biden appeared Vice Presidential and likable.
Palin appeared cute and folksy.


All in all, I think while Palin did not give the media any real sound bite to be used to mock her (unlike the Katie Couric interview), she seemed to be more concerned with how she looked on the camera. Biden, because he knew that all eyes would be on him for a gaffe or to make sure he didn’t bully poor Sarah, may have shown too much restraint. However, his game plan to debate the issues and the platform of John McCain rather than focus on Palin’s responses or recent gaffes of her own worked in his favor. He exuded confidence and experience. I didn’t get the same feeling from Palin.

I admit I am biased, seeing that Palin has not impressed me one bit before the debate. But the key thing here is that she did nothing last night that was remarkable enough to question my original opinion of her. So I’d have to say that Joe Biden was the clear winner, and I suspect that John McCain will not see any measurable “bump” in his poll numbers after this debate.


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Sarah Palin: Give A Straight Answer Already!

Chance for VP

In one of my favorite movies – “Being There” the main character, Chance the Gardener (played by Peter Sellers) is a sheltered, simple minded man, whose life revolved around watching television and gardening. He finds himself thrust into the world of politics when he’s mistaken for a genius by people who mistake his name as “Chauncy Gardener”. Everyone sees what they want to hear and hears what they want to hear when it comes to Chance. While Chance looks distinguished and his brief comments about tending his garden are taken to be deep philosophical musings, he’s thrust into a the powerful world of money and politics. When, at a high-class social gathering, Chance is asked by someone about whether he’d write a book, we get this dialog:


Ron Steigler: Mr. Gardner, uh, my editors and I have been wondering if you would consider writing a book for us, something about your um, political philosophy, what do you say?

Chance the Gardener: I can't write.

Ron Steigler: Heh, heh, of course not, who can nowadays? Listen, I have trouble writing a postcard to my children. Look uhh, we can give you a six-figure advance, I'll provide you with the very best ghostwriter, proofreaders...

Chance the Gardener: I can't read.

Ron Steigler: Of course you can't! No one has the time! We, we glance at things, we watch television...

Chance the Gardener: I like to watch TV.

Ron Steigler: Oh, oh, oh sure you do. No one reads!

I’ve come to the conclusion that Chance really would do well in politics these days. The problem is, his answers are truthful, direct, and right on target. That would never work!

Direct answers seems foreign to Sarah Palin, who seems to have difficulty answering the simplest of questions. Case in point, the continuing saga of the Katie Couric interview, where Palin is asked about what newspapers she reads: (video and transcript below)



COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read, before you were tapped for this, to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I've read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press for the media, I mean...

COURIC: Like what ones specifically? I'm curious that you...

PALIN: Um, all of 'em, any of 'em that um have been in front of me over all these years, um...

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news too. Alaska isn't a foreign country where it's kind of suggested it seems like, wow how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, DC may be thinking and doing, when you live up there in Alaska. Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

What is so hard about this question? Even, if like Chance the Gardner, she doesn’t read a newspaper, she can say something like: I don’t have time to read the paper, but I watch CNN, or Fox, or check the internet, or get updates from my advisors….. She must be getting her news from somewhere, no? Just for a point of reference, I’m not running for public office, but I read, daily, two local papers (The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The News Herald), and the Wall Street Journal. I read Barrons on Saturday and Investors Business Daily on Monday. I check the Internet often, I watch the news – local and national – several times a day. I would have NO problem answering Katie's question. But Sarah Palin seems to be stumped by it. It’s almost as if she is afraid that Katie will use her answer against her. I don’t know how that could be, at least it couldn’t have been worse as how her non-answer is being used against her. (Or could it?)

I’ll be watching the Vice Presidential debate tonight, but not for reasons one might think. I’m watching it because I want to see how this “great debater” Sarah Palin will fare with Joe Biden when she actually has to provide a definitive answer to a question. So far, she avoids specifics so she can’t be pinned down to anything, turning avoidance of a question into an art form. Maybe she should watch the movie “Being There” before the debate and take a lesson from Chance – answer the question completely and honestly, and talk about television and gardening. There really is no way to fail if one can do that.



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