WI + 9 Obama, Will the MSM stop saying its a swing state and move it to leaning Obama already?

Katie Couric is doing the work of a patriot this week.

Sir, may I have some more? Please Sir!!!

I think that since Palin has gotten herself in trouble with previous specific remarks, her handlers have told her to avoid taking specific stances on issues, as much as possible.

They have warned her to not provide any more ammo to those foreign journalists from Gotchastan, which is a very dangerous place, since one can not watch it from Alaska. Yup! Yup!

This is worse than silence. It has always been my understanding that the right wing nuts, the very people Palin is supposed to attract, are absolutely against the notion of a right to privacy. She would have been better off getting up and walking off.

Seriously, can you say "President Sarah Palin" and not feel really scared for America?
I can't.

I think everyone is being a little unfair... as a New Zealander, off the top of my head I can only name Brown v Board of Education, Bush v Gore, and Dred Scott v Sandford... and it`s not like a VP candidate is going to come out against any of those.

It`s being spun all over the place that she couldn`t name any any other SC decisions, which like I say is unfair.

I think Eric hits the nail on the head though - what`s more concerning is not that she can`t name SC decisions she disagrees with - it`s the way she basically tries to bullshit her way through an answer, rather than just saying `I can`t think of any right now`, or showing any self awareness whatsoever of her lack of knowledge. There`s a clear pattern of this, and that`s why I think she`s a terrible choice.

I think the McCain camp was very smart to push that the issue was being stumped over Supreme Court cases. The real issue here is that she doesn't understand what was at issue in Roe v. Wade and why conservatives hate it: it recognizes a right to privacy (well Griswold did). She just doesn't understand.

I think she's just been packed with so many facts and techniques by her handlers she just can't pull out any answering strategies quickly enough. You can surely her mind working to crank out any BS that sounds like something. Biden had a good answer to that question: "I wish I could get your husband arrested for beating you up, but the Supreme Court said 'No'." earned some points in a couple of categories there.

and yet...here...not 3 months ago...she disagreed with the supreme court's exxon valdez decision on alaskan tv:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H-26MOxH34

palin is either completely out to lunch, or not allowed to talk about her (few) opinions. which is worse...it's like sophie's choice, i really can't decide...

OUCH that hurts. I love me some Katie C.

I believe Halcro said that Palin was master at giving answers without answering anything. That seems to be what she tries to do here. He also said that she once mocked somebody (possibly him) for having all these facts and figures to use in a debate as she feels folks don't want to hear that stuff during a debate.

I have to say it again, Sarah looks like she just wandered off SNL's Jeopardy set.

This reminds me of Leno's man on the street bit or whatever it was called where he asked random people on the street simple trivia. Most ended up not knowing and looking foolish.
Those people however, were not up for the FUCKING VICE PRESIDENCY OF THE U.S.A!!!!
Seriously, this election is turning me into a full blown alcoholic.
I had a dream where Biden at the debates, looked directly into the camera and asked "Are you kidding me". sigh, great dream.

Shades of Commander CooCoo Bananas - McLame told the Des Moines Register that he has always aspired to be dictator.

I'm seeing this Des Moines Register interview for the first time on Olbermann - he is royally pissed off and lying like a rug.

I think we have to applaud CBS for trickling these snippets of interviews out over a long period of time. It's providing a week long focus on Palin's ineptitude. If they aired the whole thing at once, the public would've moved on to the next thing.

Of course, this is in their own self-interest to get as many people to watch as possible, but it also works out pretty well for Obama.

1. How can someone say that a right found in the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted by the states.

2. She's never heard of Miranda rights (Miranda v Arizona). I think she must just freeze up completely in these situations.

Just Wow. It's not just her take on the right to privacy. Her answer for "Supreme Court decisions I disagree with" is "cases where there is not absolute consensus by every American" and "any issue that could best be dealt with on the state level" i.e., "States' Rights." (Because that's her talking point for Roe v. Wade -- that the feds should not be interfering in a state's legislation on the abortion issue.) So does that mean that the feds shouldn't be interfering on a state's decision on the integration issue (Brown v. Board of Education)? Interracial marriage (Loving v. Virginia)?

Wow.

Hear that? It's the sound of the McCain campaign imploding.

For a mental break, this vid gives a interesting take on Dr. FrankenMcCain has given us with his creation and what it has done to his campaign

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH2nQHPs4aA

It's refreshing to see support for Griswold coming back into vogue. I just didn't see it coming from a Republican.
Tip 'o the hat to you, Couric. You're smarter than I gave you credit for.

I think we are forgetting how this whole thing got set up:

While these bits have played out over days to us, is was a single interview with Palin.

Suppose we assume she was simply having an off day? (I don't for a second believe that, but let's suppose.) It was McCain's "campaign shield" strategy that put them in this position. Without follow up with other interview clips, Palin gets strangled on a single bad interview. And these are the easiest, open-ended softball questions you can imagine: "name us a news source?" Even FNC didn't think of asking something so easy!

No, as bad a Palin is, McCain is running a terrible campaign and deserves the blame here for bad tactics. By the way, picking a running mate based solely on gender/youth/surprise was bad strategy.

You see? Some of us do know the difference.

She thinks there's an inherit right to privacy in the Constitution.

What does this mean about how McCain would appoint Supreme Court justices? Will she advocate for broad constructivists? Locating an un-enumerated right to privacy in the Constitution was the ultimate in judicial activism.

Saying she thinks there's an inherit right to privacy is a lot broader than just the implication that she doesn't understand Roe. It impacts (or should impact) how she's going to feel about almost every conservative issue under the sun. Does she support the PATRIOT Act, given that it contains so many incursions on the right to privacy? Does she think that interstate commerce laws should be broadly construed as well, which would give the Federal government more power to regulate markets, instead of shifting that burden towards the states?

The problem here isn't that her stance on abortion is incoherent (although given the voter block she was nominated to appeal to, that is a problem), it's that if she's being truthful about her stance on privacy, her entire political existence is incoherent. If she actually thinks it's good to broadly construe the Constitution, then nothing in her platform makes an ounce of rational sense.

You know, the thing that's going to be different about this debate compared to her debates in Alaska is that the media is going to chew over her answers ad nauseum for a few days. Each answer she gives has the potential of generating another news story, whereas in Alaska, they have the debate, everyone thinks she did fine, and they never hear anything more about it. If she doesn't really answer a question, even if Ifill doesn't follow up, the media will call her on it later.

Jesus Fucking Christ. I had shivers running down my spine. Chilling. Still shocked!!!

If this doesn't kill their chances, let's all pitch in to a buck or two. buy a boat and sail to the other of the Atlantic.

I'm seriously worried. How can anyone see and not be scared. I knew GOP would play fear card, but boy this trumps any fears from the past.

So she's a pro-life federalist...who believes the Constitution grants our citizens the right to privacy...and that the states should have the ability to nullify this Constitutionally granted right to privacy if they choose.

Anyone else's head hurt?

I think there is one thing that keeps getting lost in the whole 'expectation setting' game. After the woman has been ridiculed twice on SNL even if she has a 'good' debate the meme of her as a joke is already out there in the national psyche. So how much ground can she make up after being in the bubble for a month and every time she has given an interview she has been a disaster?

More importantly though, those who talk up her debates in Alaska seem to be missing two crucial points, to my mind: First--even when she sounds, composed, confident even winning in those debates she is tap dancing and not giving answers. If you read the transcripts from those debates you can see she has the same problem formulating good string grammatical coherent sentences. It is just a cloud of words, but because she is immersed in Alaska issues and knows the code words she needs to use to sound on the ball she comes off stronger and more coherent than she does now.

Second, it is one thing to sound (semi or more) coherent talking about issues you are familiar with and that have to do with your every day life in the small media environment of Alaska. Just because she was able to do that it does not mean she will be able to do the same in the big-media national stage. No matter how much she crams for this there will be things she won't know a thing about and she will be trying to tap dance around it but if that worked well in Alaska I don't see how that works well in the national stage. That requires a different kind of finesse and talent that she does not have yet. And it won't lay precisely because people are already pre-disposed to think of her as being a complete idiot. To put it in sports a great minor league baseball player cannot play on the World Series of the Major League and expect that he will be playing at the same level and be immediately successful. This requires a completely different talent base. She has neither the knowledge for this nor the talent to make it on a couple of week's notice.
She might survive tomorrow but it will only if she spend the whole night attacking Obama and Biden, mocking and being condescending, but that too will be bad since she has no credibility now to be the one who mocks.

Biden should just leave her alone, ignore her and focus on McCain. She will self destruct.

For the love of God, will some one ask those pro-life loons this question:

If abortion is murder, when ruled legal on the federal level, then why would it not be murder when ruled legal by an individual state"

Does anyone else think the McCain campaign feels like it's tied down to train tracks with the train bearing down on them right about now?

Eric, I'm in a bad mood after watching that clip. So please don't try to pontificate. She was not trying to making 'vague' references as you call it. She doesn't know what 'Right to Privacy' means w.r.t Roe v. Wade. That's not dodging or avoiding a question- that's pure ignorance- not knowing one of the most important decisions of the land.

That is ignorance.

Comparing Biden's gaffes to Palin's gaffes is ridiculous - Joe Biden sounds like the smartest guy in the room 98% of the time. Joe Biden IS the smartest guy in the room 99% of the time. But he's got a slight case of foot in mouth disease. If he didn't chances are he'd a been POTUS by now.

But ultimately him being smart is a known known. And him saying something stupid 1% of the time is a known known. So, when he screws up there is some context and history to it. Yeah, he needs to avoid any "clean black guy" remarks. But Joe Biden literally answers hundreds if not thousands of questions from reporters sounding brilliantly between gaffes. Palin can't handle friggin Katie Couric.

The other 1% of the time is when Biden is in the same room with Obama.

Palin is a mystery. I thought she was a standard far right politician. But if she were, the names of Warren Court decisions should drip from her lips - Miranda, for instance.

She doesn't really seem to care that much about politics. I think, aside from a few right wing memes, she doesn't know or care that much about the dittohead sector.

Nothing wrong with that. But what is it, exactly, that attracts her about the VP spot? The salary? Or - and this is realy my theory - she wants to ride this to a tv hosting job.

From the NYTimes:

"Mr. Obama spoke in support of the plan, but Mr. McCain did not address the chamber. As their colleagues gathered on the Senate floor for a series of votes, Mr. Obama walked over to the Republican side of the chamber to shake his rival’s hand. He was greeted with a chilly look and a brief return handshake from Mr. McCain."

......

McCain is so out classed by Obama.

OT:  Sez here that the Nevada Sec'y of State just released voter-registration figures showing Ds now lead Rs by over 80,000!

Damn!  Whoda thunkit???