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Politics : Sarah Palin for President 2008 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Smiling Bob who wrote (155)	2/21/2012 1:55:12 PM
From: Peter V	Respond to of 167

'Game Change': Since Palin choice, political lessons learned latimes.com By James Rainey 7:24 AM PST, February 18, 2012 Among the many plots raised in the upcoming HBO movie "Game Change," one of the most provocative is the conflict between 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Steve Schmidt, the senior strategist on the campaign. In defending the substance of the film in an interview with The Times, Schmidt also talked about what he said should be an "important lesson" from the last national race. "Even today, when you turn on the television and hear talk about who will likely be vice president, all of the speculation is thoroughly through the prism of political preparedness, not through the prism of being prepared to take the oath of office as president," Schmidt said. The long-time Republican party consultant said other campaigns should learn from McCain '08 that potential vice presidential running mates can't be scrutinized too closely. "The vetting process did not disclose what would become obvious afterward," Schmidt said in the phone interview from his home in Lake Tahoe. "We had a person who fundamentally lacked the knowledge and basis -- at a very, very deep level -- to be a plausible commander in chief and to take the oath of office as president, should it become necessary." The film, due to air March 10, shows how the campaign was leaning toward choosing Sen. Joe Lieberman -- a former Democrat who by that point was an independent -- as McCain's VP pick, until it received considerable blowback from conservatives. The campaign then shifted, with only about a week to go before the Republican Convention, to other possibilities. Aside from that shortened time-frame, Schmidt declined to rehash why the McCain campaign failed to more thoroughly check out Palin, then the governor of Alaska. But he said he personally had to bear some responsibility. "When you are a close advisor to one of the two people who could be president of the United States," Schmidt said, "it requires you to exercise good judgment, not 98% of the time or 99% of the time but 100% of the time." Palin has told interviewers she does not intend to watch "Game Change." Her aides posted a statement on the Sarah PAC website Friday calling the two-hour movie a "fiction." They suggested that a quest for higher ratings motivated the filmmakers and the cable company. The statement, in part, declares: "HBO Studio heads decided they would generate more profit by inventing facts and scenes for the purpose of fictionalizing a history written by people with no personal knowledge of the situations they attempt to depict." Palin, who left the governor's office in 2009 and went on to become an author, reality TV star and Fox News commentator, has previously rejected the notion that McCain's team did not know enough about her prior to tapping her as his running mate. She called the vetting that ended up in her selection "thorough" and blamed the Arizona senator's handlers for botching the campaign by being too tentative and controlling, among other failures. Like many other officials from McCain-Palin '08, Schmidt gave extensive interviews to the two journalists who wrote the book "Game Change" and also talked to the writer and director of the movie. While Schmidt endorsed the final product, he said some details varied from actual events. In the movie, for instance, the McCain character acknowledges the need to shake up a race he is trailing and to close the "gender gap" -- the wide lead candidate Barack Obama had among women. In the movie, the McCain character responds to this information, saying, "So find me a woman." Schmidt said he never heard McCain speak those words. "It was a minor point of dramatization to make a point," Schmidt said. "But the essence of that point was true: that he knew, and we knew, we had to do something different." [For the Record, Feb. 18: An earlier version of this post said the McCain campaign was leaning toward picking Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman as McCain’s running mate in 2008. At that point, Lieberman had switched his party affiliation from Democrat to independent.]

To: Smiling Bob who wrote (155)	4/21/2012 2:10:40 PM
From: Skywatcher	Respond to of 167

indeed it is time...and time to call out the white republican party for what it really stands for...including Ted Nugent and his sickening bigotry Exclusive: Seller of Controversial Anti-Obama Sticker Says It's Not Racist Paula Smith of Hinesville, Georgia has a company called Stickatude.com. And they’re selling their own version of an anti-Obama bumper sticker that reads “Don’t Re-Nig 2012.” Ms. Smith told me in a telephone conversation on Saturday afternoon that the bumper sticker has been in their inventory since June 2010, but just in the last few days it’s started selling. The price is $3. Ms. Smith insisted that the bumper sticker is not racist. I asked her about the “N” word, for which “nig” is the shortened version. “According to the dictionary [the N word] does not mean black. It means a low down, lazy, sorry, low down person. That’s what the N word means.” In Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, the word is defined as “member of any dark skinned race. Taken to be offensive.” Dictionary.com says the word “is now probably the most offensive word in English. Its degree of offensiveness has increased markedly in recent years, although it has been used in a derogatory manner since at least the Revolutionary War. Definitions 1a, 1b, and 2 represent meanings that are deeply disparaging and are used when the speaker deliberately wishes to cause great offense.” Ms. Smith — who has an affable disposition and a hearty laugh–said she thought the website was “dead” and up until recently none of her bumper stickers was selling at all. Another site, called Stumpy’s Stickers, was originally credited with selling the Obama sticker. Ms. Smith says however she doesn’t own that site and didn’t know anything about it. She said Stumpy’s Stickers could have linked to their site, but she didn’t sell them any that they could have re-sold. Where did Ms. Smith find the sticker in the first place? “We just found it on the internet, and thought it was cute. It’s been up there since he’s been president.” How did I find Stickatude.com? Clicking on Stumpysstickers.com from a story posted to Yahoo! caused a redirect to Stickatude. Ms. Smith is the official registered owner of the internet address, www.stickatude.com. The Smiths own a well known paint ball field in Hinesville — a town near Savannah. Mrs. Smith said customers come from all over the world. Ms. Smith said she is not racist, she just wants Obama out of office. She tells me she doesn’t have a preferred replacement candidate. “And besides Obama is not even black. He’s got a mixture of race. It’s his choice of what his nationality is. I’m a mixed breed. I call myself a Heinz 57,” she says, referring to an ancestry that’s part of French, Scottish, and German. “I just want someone that’s going to help the United States and not give it other countries all the time. And stop giving the immigrants the benefits that most Americans inside their own states can’t even get because they’re giving it others who don’t even live here as an American. “I do find it amazing and entertaining that one of our stickers has become a racist thing,” Ms. Smith told me. I asked her if she thought the “N” Word was a bad word? “No,” she said, ” because I don’t use it. I have kids here around me that are black kids. I call them my own kids. I’ve helped black families…to guide them in the right direction. Paintball is one of these things. We like to laugh and have a good time. That’s our way of life.” forbes.com