As long as it’s light outside.
It just keeps getting better and better:
I suppose that the GOP Grand High Mucketimucks (or staffers who report to them) must have seen some of the same YouTube videos we have, and started shitting bricks at the thought of what might happen if she ran at the top of the ticket, thus putting her under a more intense microscope for several times as long.
One of the other faction leaders of the GOP is declaring, “Now, you die, and we all move up in rank!”
That’s not how it works. Natural death does not suffice for a general round of promotions; someone must be murdered.
Geez, what do they teach in these schools?
Her first clue was in the name. North American Free Trade Agreement. That would mean she doesn’t know what the letters in NAFTA stand for, which is equally stupid (or ignorant).
She isn’t going to run in 2012, if she does she isn’t going to win, but I’m worried she’ll become a Senator. She can screw with Alaska all she wants, they voted for her, but a seat in the Senate makes me think Stevens wasn’t so bad after all.
Gay Marriage!
This.
Its the very first thing that Carl Cameron when the anchor gives him the go-to: “Well, I wish I could have told you back at the time, but all of it was put off the record until after the election.”
WTF? What the fuck kind of journalism is that?
Screw Fox News (and Newsweek, too) for making this type of deal.
I want my journalists to tell me what’s happening in on-going news stories, to bring me information while it is still relevant. Can you imagine if McCain/Palin had won, and then we found out this stuff?
It would have been the greatest hoodwink the country had ever seen.
Fuck Fox, fuck Newsweek, and fuck any other journalistic endeavour that signs on to this kind of thing.
I really think what we’re seeing here is a growing divide between the ‘bible thumping republicans’ and the ‘fiscally conservative republicans’. The first were never happy with McCain and the later blame the first for holding them back with Independents.
Actually, i believe that journalistic ethics dictate that, if you agree to hear an off-the-record comment, you are obliged to respect the wishes of he person who gives you the information.
Now, someone can’t retrospectively tell you that something is off the record. They can’t (or shouldn’t be able to) call you and say, “Hey, that thing i told you on the record last week? That’s now off the record.” Sorry, too late.
But if someone says to you, “I’ll tell you this, but it’s off the record until after the election,” and you choose to hear the information under those conditions, then you are required by journalistic ethics to honor the conditions.
At least, i’m pretty sure that’s how it works. I’d appreciate anyone with newspaper experience who can contribute to this discussion. Paging Jonathan Chance to the thread.
Yeah, I’m hip to what you are saying, and I agree that it would be wrong to break the agreement once it’s reached.
I’m saying that this type of agreement is not something a news-gathering organization should make.
I’m thinking about authors who follow a football coach for a year and then write a book; that seems ok, right? But what if the author sees the coach slap a player? Or direct his assistant coach to get someone to take a star player’s exams? Isn’t there at some point an ethical lapse in not informing people that things are happening that are wrong?
I thought that was what being a journalist was all about: discovering facts, and putting them out there for the public to know.
These type of secrecy agreements make for sensational stories, but they also allow situations like we have right now: seeming-complicity in trying to hoodwink the public or enabling the wrong-doing through silence.
I think journalists should be asking themselves: is the interest of the fourth estate, and the public at large, best served in this manner?
My answer to this is “no”.
It’s always true; a political party needs to get its ass kicked twice to learn a lesson.
I theorized to someone a few weeks back that Obama would have one hell of a time getting re-elected in 2012 because things would be tough for him. But in retrospect, I was totally wrong, because the GOP is probably going to fuck up that election in the most catastrophic, flaming-school-bus-wreck, hilarious manner. Then I remmebered; a party needs to lose twice to learn their lesson. They will, stupdily, think they need to get more extreme to win.
I’d give the GOP a three in four chance of nominating an evangelical nutball, running a campaign that would make McCain-Palin look like Obama’s campaign by comparison, and be absolutely annihilated on November 6, 2012. I’m talking Obama taking 400 or more electoral votes.
Then, in 2016, the GOP will be ready to put up a serious candidate.
looks panicked
faints dramatically
Mightn’t that first loss be the '06 election?
So, you think he’s excited he gets to dig through Palin’s drawers, or do you think he’s on the plane thinking “I went to law school for this?”.
-Joe
These are the kinds of deals that need to be made to penetrate the campaigns deeply. You’re saying they should have demanded the right to release the info sooner, but I’m thinking they wouldn’t have gotten the information at all without making this promise. I’m sure they started from the position closest to their interests (which happen to coincide with ours in this case) and negotiated inward until they found a consensus. Remember that they had to get both parties to agree to the same conditions, which is probably a hell of a lot harder than you’re giving them credit for.
The woman is an unapologetic liar. So in 2012, she will simply say “All relevant medical records were already released”, “Everything you need to know we told you four years ago”, and “We disclosed that information in the past and see no reason to revisit it now.” And many people will have short memories and let it slide, taking her word as truth.
"We are told that…*She didn’t know what countries make up NAFTA.
She didn’t know that Africa is a continent."*
Anyone got a direct quote of Palin not knowing these things?
No, and that’s an excellent point, DrDeth.