The "I can see Russia" line, combined with the eerie Tina Fey resemblance was just devastating for Palin's chances.

I know I'll probably be in the distinct minority on this one, but I am deeply happy that Palin doesn't have much time to rehabilitate her image. While I think she's not qualified to be Vice President, I do think she's quite clever and quick to learn, and I have a feeling that if we had a month to go, rather than two weeks, she'd have the press wound around her little pinkie.

I remember when she was announced - Barack and Joe Biden at first blurted out: "This is a joke!" and then backpedaled.

They were right the first time, of course.

Um, Senator...

The chicken is home. Where do you want her to roost?

She's horrible in every way.

Picking Palin could become one of the most legendary backfires in political history!!

My favorite take on the Palin nomination was from Matt Damon, something along the lines of "this is like the plot from a bad Disney movie."

ROFL! It's hilarious to watch his "mavericky" stunt blow up in his face!

Some folks believe that Palin was solely to motivate the base to save down ticket races.

I'm glad he didn't choose Ridge, Pawlenty, Romney, or Portman. All had their exploitable warts - Ridge is pro-choice, Pawlenty is boring, Romney had too many houses (big deal at the time) and Portman is a Bush White House veteran, but none could be as bad as Palin.

Let's make this perfectly clear. It is not Palin's fault McCain chose her; it is McCain's fault. What was she supposed say when he offered her the slot? "John, I can't do this because I am utterly unqualified and have little or no knowledge or any world and most national affairs, I canned my police chief when he refused to fire my ex brother-in-law, my daughter just got knocked up by an orang a tang she was dating, I've been taking extra state money left and right, and I don't really believe in evolution?"

Hey guys, whassup wit all the Palin hate? I'm a lonely guy and wouldn't mind having a night wit her daughter, the pregnant one...

Oh, did I just say that out loud?

Young women don't like her because she's not qualified. Old women don't like her because she's not a lady.

Why is any poll, two weeks out, still reporting REGISTERED VOTERS as the top line number?

registration is over (except in places with same day reg, of course), now it's all about who will actually show up

From:
Head of State
http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/10/mccains-health-part-i.html

Monday, October 20, 2008
McCain's Health

As indicated by today's Pew Research findings indicating increasing concerns about John McCain's age, behavior and judgment, health--the physical and cognitive functioning of the person holding, arguably, the most important position on Earth is certainly relevant to the very essentials of the Presidency, such as decision-making, ability to attend to multiple and constantly shifting events, scenarios and possibilities, ability to persist and to remain both strong and flexible under stress, and the abilities to handle staff capabilities, demands, and agendas, to name but a few key areas--but the public has not seemed to be quite ready to deal with the question of McCain's health, regarding it either in categorical terms and truisms--rather than truth; or in humor regarding his age--such as listing the number of jobs he would be ineligible to hold at his age (Judgeships, commercial airline pilot, etc.), the AP noting that "six-packs, automatic transmissions and the American Express card were all introduced after he was born", a site devoted entirely to McCain's age entitled "John McCain. Old. Really Old"; the Harvard Satyrical Press noting that he "voted for the Articles of Confederation before he voted against them" and so on; Others have simply avoided the issue entirely (except, often, for the right-wing, which argued strenuously and extensively that McCain was "too old" in multiple publications during the primary fight, publications that have now grown curiously silent on the issue).

In the current total situation--a nation beset by financial crisis; the existence of multiple unstable foreign policy arenas as well as critical future decisions with regard to the stabilization of others; and the essential need to steadily recover from eight years of a largely disastrous domestic and foreign policies, has combined with evidence--the choice of a largely unqualified Vice Presidential candidate, and the impulsive, reactive, and often shifting decision-making, based largely on the needs and contingencies of the moment, that a McCain Presidency would lack the steady, broad, persistent and flexible intellectual and functional foundations necessary at this critical time. The reasons for the reactions and decision-making seen thus far are legion. However, one important contributing factor--and one that, by actuarial standards, would be likely to grow worse during a McCain Presidency--is the candidate's health. Of course, it is important to be careful in making conclusions about health without a physician's examination and report; nevertheless, it is also important to make reasonable inferences about functioning that are made from the data, given the potential significance of the information to our decision. This is information that any citizen can find and use to educate themselves about questions about McCain's health, just as journalists do or wish to do--and given that concerns about Sarah Palin as a Vice Presidential candidate also rank highly among voter issues, are especially salient.

Physically, Senator McCain has shown an admirable vigor on the campaign trail that certainly a minority of 72-year old men could match. He is driven like few men of his age towards such a demanding goal.

However, in terms of physical functioning, he has also suffered from four episodes of one of the most serious forms of skin cancer melanoma, including two malignant melanomas removed from his arm and temple during a six-hour operation in 2000--which also included removal of his salivary gland and multiple lymph nodes in his neck, as well as the removal in 2002 of a melanoma on his nose. This puts into stark contrast his choice of a Vice Presidential candidate who has struggled to discuss basic aspects of domestic and foreign policy at a time of vital demands in both areas. Yet, as we will see below, the McCain campaign has fought to keep access to his voluminous medical records from the scrutiny necessary to accurately determine current and past functioning, and likely prognoses. Indeed, as we will see, in May 2008, the McCain campaign limited access to these records to one local newspaper and one national newspaper who were allowed to observe the records for a limited period; they did not allow photocopying and did not release the records. Moreover, records were only provided for the previous eight years, leaving out thousands of pages of McCain's medical history from all of those prior years.

Cognitively, in terms of emotional functioning and intelligence, McCain often displays a canny sense of the moment and readily moves towards certain forms of humor. He is not unintelligent--surely more intelligent than his predecessor it is sad but true to say, and has shown growth and development in certain ways that represent admirable, if in part perhaps politically opportunistic, changes.

At the same time, the core individual is emotionally shot through with a persistent anger than burns through even his most humorous moment--noted even in the largely hagiographic biography by Bob Timberg. The resentment, the need to prove, the anger at what has occurred--both during Hanoi and long before--is always there, driving him on as a prime referent, shaping his reactions to events, his positions and inflexibility on what is right, even the wryness of his humor as compared to his sense of rage, drawing everything in his orbit to that central point, in a way that is even more fundamental than Bush's familial resentments--far more willing, in movement from that central point, to make the impulsive, "What the hell" gesture, far less burdened by the momentary, quickly covered self doubt.

If the key emotion is an impulsive, reactive rage shot through by the long and hard learned bare container of tactics--there are many moments when you can see him actually engaging in the suppressive act of not exploding--the cognitive concerns are of more recent origin, but also now highly relevant. As the journal Annals of Internal Medicine noted in Prevalence of Cognitive Impairment without Dementia in the United States (2008), nearly one-quarter of adults who are age 71 or above suffer from the disorder known as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Other estimates of the disorder among the elderly have ranged from 17-34%. MCI is often a precursor to Alzheimer's Dementia--that is, those who are diagnosed with MCI often progress to this more serious disorder of memory and functioning as they continue to age. Indeed, in comparison to elderly persons who are healthy, who develop dementia at a rate of 1-2% per year, those who have MCI have been estimated to progress to dementia at a rate of 10-15% per year. The Mayo Alzheimer Disease Center has found that, for those who have MCI, the progression to Alzheimer's rated as high as 80% in MCI populations studied for 6 years.

During the 2000 election campaign, McCain's cognitive function--his memory, his tendency to make notable and cognitively revealing slips--was not at issue. The emotional factors--impulsivity, rage--were clear, if somewhat better controlled (this issue of decreased control due to cognitive impairment is another issue to be discussed in the next section). However, there was no evidence, for example of memory impairment.

Occasional errors of memory and verbal slips are common for all of us. However, during the 2008 campaign, however, McCain has shown repeated errors of memory and misstatements that are at the very least suggestive of MCI; for example: not once, but repeatedly referring to the existence of Czechoslovakia, a nation that does not exist--suggesting not only the original error of memory, but the forgetting of the error consistent with an impairment in the ability to remember later-learned information characteristic of MCI; the confusion of among the nations of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and which nations border one another; the inability to remember his own voting record on major/substantive issues, such as contraception; inability recalling his stance on discussions with Spain, or the nation's Prime Minister, referring to Vladimir Putin as the "President of Germany", and forgetting a question that he had just been asked in Panama City--seemingly unable to focus on or follow the words that had just been said, although clearly audible and sensible content.

In distinguishing between ordinary memory loss and MCI, it is important to realize that MCI occurs across multiple areas or domains of cognition. Thus, in addition to showing memory loss, those with MCI also show word-finding difficulty and other language disturbances, as well as difficulties with attention, such as focusing on and following other people's speech. As the initial presentation of these is mild, and the individual is otherwise able to function, they may deny such difficulties. The importance here is the disturbance in multiple areas of cognition. While certainly deserving of greater study, it is significant to note that there is evidence of each of these in the examples above.

Cite:
Head of State
http://headofstate.blogspot.com/2008/10/mccains-health-part-i.html

What's really telling is there a contingent of the republican base who thinks she is their next superstar. Really.

I think once she is no longer guvn'r of Alaska, she will enjoy a long and fruitful career as a Fox News personality.

All the qualities that her supporters praise about her, charming, youthful, perky, energetic, are great if you are hosting a TV show but not really for running the USA.

If Fox News gave Huck his own show, then she could get 5 times the ratings he does.

Give me some help with her show title:

Palin and Pals

You Betcha

Sarracuda

I agree she belongs at Fox and I think she could be a real star there.

She's got it all for Fox- including being meaner than shit.

All the qualities that her supporters praise about her, charming,

She's about as charming as a water moccasin. She's not even as charming as a rattlesnake.

That ain't charm. Oddly enough, women seem to get this and men apparently don't.

Charm works equally on men and women. What Palin has does not work on women by and large.

That ain't charm. She's selling sex.

That's all there is to it.

How to destroy your campaign in less than an hour. From an article to appear in NYT Magazine Article about the dysfunction which is the McCain Campaign:

Having interviewed several of the Senator's chief aides, Draper details the process by which McCain ultimately chose his running mate (New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was surprisingly high on the list). And the decision may have been even more impulsive than initially thought. Gov. Sarah Palin, who had never been on the VP shortlist, was advanced at the last minute by Schmidt and Rick Davis, and was picked after a less-than-hour-long chat in with McCain at his ranch in Arizona.

GOP spends $150,000 on clothing for Palin and her family. (Countdown)

The only question left is the size of the butt whuppin

July 31, 2008 - Palin wants to make sure "that VP slot is especially fruitful for Alaska".

That is the AIP talkin', doncha know.

Got to keep working, I actually want these polls to tighten up, that way we can panick AND KEEP WORKING!

Based on what I've seen about their income tax returns the Palins don't have that much money of their own. I am agog at $150,000 for one shopping spree on clothes and shoes.

I can't imagine - and we do better than the Palins. a lot.