Jack Gray
AC360 Associate Producer

Sorry, that sound you heard last night was me screaming.  I was having that dream again.  The one where I’m a turkey being put to my death and Sarah Palin is standing in front of me laughing.  I’m assuming you’ve seen the now-famous video from yesterday.  No wonder she needed that $150,000 from the RNC for new clothes.  Her old clothes were probably still covered in blood from last Christmas, when she blew Rudolph’s head off.

I mean, seriously, does no one listen to my advice?  If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times:  When you give a television interview in front of helpless warbling birds being fed into a wood chipper make sure to put down your hot cocoa.  Otherwise you just look ridiculous.

And while Sarah Palin was starring in her own version of Fargo her former opponent Joe Biden was celebrating a birthday.  He turned 66.  And his hair plugs turned 4.  By the way, there is no truth to the rumor that Madeleine Albright jumped out of a cake.

Keep reading

Dana Bash | BIO
CNN Political Correspondent

Trying to get more info, but I’m told by one Republican source here at the GOP Governors Association meeting that as of 830a , Gov. Sarah Palin was supposed to be at the presser without the row of fellow governors who stood silently behind her.

Another RGA source tells me the reason for that is a “long story” that i’ll be told later.

Haley Barbour told Evan Glass that they all met at 9a and by then it was “decided” that they’d all go out.

But , notice that the host, Florida’s Charlie Crist, wasn’t even there.
A Florida GOP source said “he didn’t know about it”

Also, it was slated for 20 minutes or so, but as you all saw, she took 4 questions…and the last, mine, was only because Gov Perry forced it.

If you couldn’t sense the awkward tension on TV, you could definitely feel it in the room….

Jack Gray
AC360 Associate Producer

Well, it’s about time.  Now that the presidential election is over America can return its focus to that which is truly important.  For example, perhaps you’ve been so caught up in politics that you didn’t know Jennifer Aniston is on the cover of next month’s Vogue.  And inside the magazine she discusses her new Christmas movie: “It’s a Wonderful Life…Until Angelina Jolie Steals Your Husband.”

Then there’s Lindsay “Hey Anderson Cooper, if you think my mother is a trainwreck just wait until you hear my political analysis” Lohan, who offered her take on the election to that venerable chronicler of American history known as Access Hollywood. “It’s an amazing thing,” she said, “it’s our first colored president.”  Thanks, Archie Bunker.  You can stop talking now.

Keep reading

The war of words between supporters of each half of the Republican presidential ticket escalated Thursday, as a spokeswoman for Sarah Palin called charges circulated by former campaign aides to John McCain ‘sickening,’ and the Alaska governor herself said the advisers spreading the rumors were ‘small, evidently bitter’ people.

Former McCain campaign aides have been sources for a string of embarrassing stories about Palin that have become public since GOP defeat Tuesday night, including the charge that she spent thousands of dollars more on clothing for herself and her family than the $150,000 that has been reported.

There have also been reports of a somewhat distant relationship between John McCain and his running mate.

“This is so unfortunate and, quite honestly, sickening,” said Palin aide Meghan Stapleton in a statement. “The accusations we are hearing and reading are not true and since we deny all these anonymous allegations, there is nothing specific to which we will respond.

Read More…

CNN’s Dana Bash interviews Gov. Sarah Palin before she heads home to Alaska.

The Best Political Team in Outer Space

Jack Gray
AC360 Associate Producer 

So I was talking to a woman on the subway this morning, via hologram of course.  What, you actually still talk to people in person?  You are so November 3rd.   Anyway, no, I told her – there is no truth to the rumor that the Obamas are going to name their new dog Jeremiah Hussein Ayers.  Although I do think that’d be a cute name for a Beagle.

Anyway, it’s finally over.  Now can we please get back to the important things? I know I’m not the only one who wants an update on the singing career of Elliot Spitzer’s favorite prostitute.

Oh right, there’s the whole transition thing.  The time-honored prelude to the peaceful handover of power.  And by prelude I mean making sure the new president will have enough staplers.

Then, of course, President-elect Obama has to choose his cabinet.  Note to self:  No need to refill Ambien prescription for the week John Kerry has his Secretary of State confirmation hearings.

For his part, John McCain will humbly return to the Senate.  And then to his seven homes and thirteen cars.

The best thing about being president, I think, is all the cool modes of transportation.  Like Marine One, the presidential helicopter.  Which is almost as nice as the helicopter Anderson takes to work everyday.

Keep reading

John McCain holds a campaign rally at the University of Scranton on Sunday.

Dugald McConnell
CNN producer

It’s a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican in 20 years, and recent polls are showing a lead for Democratic candidate Sen. Barack Obama of five to ten percent. But Republican Sen. John McCain is blitzing Pennsylvania almost every day: Monday marks the 10th day out the last 15 days that either McCain or his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, is campaigning there.

Republicans see their efforts to flip Pennsylvania as crucial, if McCain is to have a path to victory on Tuesday.

“Back in August or September, few people thought it would come down to one or two states,” says Republican Tom Ridge, a former governor of the Keystone State. “But it’s now down to Pennsylvania and one or two others.”

With McCain mostly playing defense in an effort to hold on to states George Bush won in 2000 and 2004, Pennsylvania may be one of the only states where he is still playing offense. Republicans are looking to the state’s 21 Electoral College votes as a way to make up for potential losses in red states where McCain is currently behind, such as Iowa, Nevada, Colorado, and even Virginia.

Keep reading

George F. Will
Op-Ed Columnist, The Washington Post

From the invasion of Iraq to the selection of Sarah Palin, carelessness has characterized recent episodes of faux conservatism. Tuesday’s probable repudiation of the Republican Party will punish characteristics displayed in the campaign’s closing days.

Some polls show that Palin has become an even heavier weight in John McCain’s saddle than his association with George W. Bush. Did McCain, who seems to think that Palin’s never having attended a “Georgetown cocktail party” is sufficient qualification for the vice presidency, lift an eyebrow when she said that vice presidents “are in charge of the United States Senate”?

She may have been tailoring her narrative to her audience of third-graders, who do not know that vice presidents have no constitutional function in the Senate other than to cast tie-breaking votes. But does she know that when Lyndon Johnson, transformed by the 1960 election from Senate majority leader into vice president, ventured to the Capitol to attend the Democratic senators’ weekly policy luncheon, the new majority leader, Montana’s Mike Mansfield, supported by his caucus, barred him because his presence would be a derogation of the Senate’s autonomy?

Perhaps Palin’s confusion about the office for which she is auditioning comes from listening to its current occupant. Dick Cheney, the foremost practitioner of this administration’s constitutional carelessness in aggrandizing executive power, regularly attends the Senate Republicans’ Tuesday luncheons. He has said jocularly that he is “a product” of the Senate, which pays his salary, and that he has no “official duties” in the executive branch. His situational constitutionalism has, however, led him to assert, when claiming exemption from a particular executive order, that he is a member of the legislative branch and, when seeking to shield certain of his deliberations from legislative inquiry, to say that he is a member of the executive branch.

Read More…

Jane Mayer
The New Yorker

“Here’s a little news flash,” Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska and the Republican candidate for Vice-President, announced in September, during her début at the Party’s Convention, in St. Paul. “I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly these past few days that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington élite then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.” But, she added, “I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion.”

In subsequent speeches, Palin has cast herself as an antidote to the élitist culture inside the Beltway. “I’m certainly a Washington outsider, and I’m proud of that, because I think that that is what we need,” she recently told Fox News. During her first interview as John McCain’s running mate, with ABC’s Charlie Gibson, Palin was asked about her lack of experience in foreign policy. She replied, “We’ve got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual, and somebody’s big fat résumé, maybe, that shows decades and decades in the Washington establishment . . . Americans are getting sick and tired of that self-dealing, and kind of that closed-door, good-ol’-boy network that has been the Washington élite.”

Read More…

Christianity Today Editorial

Media reaction to Gov. Palin shows ignorance of evangelicalism.

The Vice Presidential nomination of Sarah Palin stunned the American public, especially the mainstream media. For weeks, the focus of Palin puzzlement shifted daily, from her support for aerial wolf hunting to her claiming per diem payments for nights spent at home to Tina Fey’s jaw-dropping Palin impersonation.

But two sex- and gender-related questions caught our attention. First, reactions to news of Bristol Palin’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy: liberal pundits gleefully announced that this was going to seriously undermine Governor Palin’s standing with the Republican Party’s evangelical base. Any informed evangelical watcher or evangelical believer could have told them that this is a non-issue.

It is a non-issue because John Newton’s famous line, “I once was lost but now I’m found,” defines the evangelical ethos. We specialize in troubled lives. Stories of transformation from sin and degradation to righteousness and wholeness frame the way evangelicals see life. From the slave-trading Newton to the White House “hatchet man” Chuck Colson, God saves people from their slavery to sin and uses them to restore others. Indeed, those of us who never did anything particularly shocking sometimes have trouble fitting in.

Evangelical pews are full of people whose family lives are untidy. If we get angry when a teen gets pregnant, it is not at the hot-blooded teens but at the fashion and entertainment industries that persistently sexualize the images of the young and set them up for bad choices. It’s no wonder: One recent study showed that adolescents with a sexually charged media diet are more than twice as likely as others to have sex by the time they turn 16. Teen pregnancy is one of the situations in which it is easiest for us to hate the sin but love the sinner.

The second media reaction that caught our attention was liberal puzzlement over conservatives who believe that only men should lead churches and marriages, yet who would not hesitate to have a woman a heartbeat away from the presidency.

Read more