As mayor and governor, Palin can request all she wants. However, she never had the power to introduce amendments for these earmarks.

I think you need to redirect on this one.

As an afterthought, how many times has Obama railed against earmark pork?

And here is the office where she got some of that sweet national executive experience we keep hearing about...

http://flickr.com/photos/87119361@N00/319098225

Kinda looks like my pappy's old bait shop.

El V: Your two posts taken together show how ridiculously hypocritical McCain is being on this issue. Most liberals haven't made earmarks the #1 issue of their candidates' careers this election.

You've missed the true import of the story by focusing on the Palin hypocrisy: battling earmarks will be an electoral disaster if McCain is called to list the earmarks he'd eliminate in every region in which he campaigns.

Every local and regional paper should create a list of earmarks that have benefited the area and ask McCain whether he opposes all of them.

The whole earmarks discussion is evidence of McCain's penchant for the tangy sound bite over the hard work of setting priorities.

Afterthought? What's an afterthought?

After I was done thinking, I thought of this...

Sort of like a pre-existing condition. It's a condition that existed before... what?

YEAH, JOHNNY MACK! Maverick McCain does it again!

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of the liberal media elite!

This will amount to not much. The desperation of trying to find a chink in the armor is amusing.

I especially like the DWI for her husband 24 years ago. That was priceless.

Here's what's really happening:

1) Obama outspends McCain 4:1
2) Unpopular war
3) Shaky economy

And McCain is running a tight race. In come Palin and there's litte to criticize so it's a perceived problem of earmarks. Good luck with that

Chris O.: Right; combine that with the amazing chutzpah required to cheer on Palin and still denigrate Obama's experience, and you get a sterling example of right-wing arrogance. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, these guys carry their balls around in a wheelbarrow.

Mark DeMoss, former chief of staff to Jerry Falwell and now a leading Christian public relations executive:

"Too many evangelicals and religious conservative are too preoccupied with values and faith and pay no attention to competence. We don't apply this approach to anything else in life, including choosing a pastor." Imagine, he said, if a church was searching for a pastor and the leadership was brought a candidate with great values but little experience. "They've been a pastor for two years at a church with 150 people but he shares our values, so we hired him to be pastor of our 5,000 person church? It wouldn't happen! We don't say, 'He shares our values, so let's hire him.' That's absurd. Yet we apply that to choosing presidents. It blows my mind."...

To be clear, DeMoss isn't saying Palin is unqualified. "The reality is, we don't know - and neither does McCain if he only met her once." The other Christian leaders who rallied around her didn't know much either. "I'm not hinting something's amiss but we don't know her and the people who gave her glowing response Friday didn't know. The euphoric rush to anoint without knowing -- it's a dangerous thing."

Actually, what ElV's comments also show is that he is ignorant and doesn't pay attention to Washington, otherwise he would have had some comments about Obama's foray into earmark-related legislation and commentary about how attempted to block it.

LOL, did you really just say there's little to criticize about Palin? Come on, V, do you really want her as President? (Which is what the office of VP is all about) A woman who lies in her introductory speech to the nation? Who fires people who don't pass her loyalty tests even when she was a small town mayor? Who thinks women should be forced to carry rapist's babies? Yes, little to criticize indeed.

Well, I would expect Palin in the positions shes had to try to get pork for the people she represents. She wouldn't be doing her job otherwise.

But McCain really doesn't get a free pass on this one. He's made pork a central tenant of his campaign. The smart thing to do here is to say he still rightly believes that the pork she wanted belongs on his list, but that Palin has plenty of other qualifications for the VP slot, yada yada Jesus.

Come on, V, do you really want her as President?

I could do worse.

1) Not a Washington insider
2) Christian
3) Family Values
4) Right-to Lifer
5) Most popular Gov ever in her state (gotta be something there).
6) Protects ALL the constitutional amendments
7) Understands middle America

I'm not saying she's ideal, but I could do worse. I could do Biden.

If Palin is so bad, then you have nothing to worry about, eh?

So, El V, you would have had serious problems with Lieberman as VP based on the grounds that he's Jewish, right?

You have simply shown that you and the rest of the left DON'T EVEN UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE.

McCain doesn't OPPOSE every one of these projects and Palin is not a hypocrite for submitting projects for funding.

What MCCain has objected to is that the earmark PROCESS SKIPS THE NORMAL FUNDING REQUEST PROCESS WHERE THE PROJECTS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE DEBATED AND VOTED ON.

I thought you would be better up to speed on the issue.

So, nice try to dig the left out of the baby fever swamps by latching onto an actual policy issue, but your just a tad off base.

It is perfectly legitimate to oppose projects stuffed into giant bills that never went though the Committe process. Not because they may be valid projects, but because they by-passed the Congressional Committe process. why is that so hard for the left to grasp?

Your so much better at spreading Obama fund raisers smears of Palins kids, maybe you should return to that programming.

Your 2-4 look a little redundant there. All candidates are Christian so I assume you mean socially conservative Christian. Same with family values, don't think you'd pick on Obama or Biden there either, unless you mean being socially conservative instead of being a good family man/woman.

I don't think I'd trust a woman who wanted to ban books from the library to uphold the 1st amendment very well. She would probably be against quartering troops in homes, I'll give you that.

And I hope you're right with that last question, but who knows for sure! I'm starting to suspect Palin is going to hurt McCain's chances, but it's still going to be a long and apparently unpredictable 2 months.

I don't think Palin is as experienced as McCain. That is why McCain is running for the top position.

There is little argument that Joe Biden is vastly more experienced than Obama. How weird that the Democrats have put Joe in second place when he is the one who actually knows something.

I could do Biden.

Heh heh.

So, El V, you would have had serious problems with Lieberman as VP based on the grounds that he's Jewish, right?

If you wish to have a representative democracy, it only makes sense to allow the people to choose people who have the same culture, religion, etc. and about 85% or more of the population of the US self-identify as Christians.

What's so hard about that?

2) Christian

She's a Pentecostal. It's a specific kind of Christianity which, if you're specifically looking for a Christian Pres/VP, you should take into account.

3) Family values

Not sure I agree with this one. Certainly her family isn't like my family, which is quite tight-knit and relatively conservative.

7) Understands middle America
NO. She understands Alaska, which is most emphatically not like middle America at all.

I'd be perfectly happy with Palin as president. I like her considerably more, right now, than I like McCain. She can change that, I'm sure, but right now I like the sound of President Palin. All the media caterwalling only makes me like it more.

And here is the office where she got some of that sweet national executive experience we keep hearing about...

I love that. I guess there is always going to be a divide between folks who feel about rural life like Eva Gabor on Green Acres, and those who consider such salt-of-the-earth folks the backbone of the country.

But it's interesting how some folks think that hilighting Palin's small town, rural roots is going to hurt her. Or that it illustrates her "inexperience" or hilights some other failing.

I'm not sure that's how it'll play nationwide. But maybe.

I've got a rock-solid rabid right-winger of a friend whose done some casual polling of her friends, both Republicans and pro-life, blue-dog evangelical Democrat types, and she was a little dismayed to find that they were unhappy with the Palin pick. So, she's worried that's going to translate into trouble in November.

Anecdotal, but it could be. I think it's a shame if that's true, but it seems like the "mother-cum-grandmother" has too much to do to be Veep meme resonates with a lot of conservative women.

Also, she (my friend) conveys that a lot of these women don't like the idea of an attractive woman in power, but that may just be her interpretation.

I don't have a problem with it.

Palin/McCain '08!

The left is INTENTIONALLY confusing the underlying request (PROJECT) with the process used to fund said project (EARMARKING VERSUS NORMAL COMMITTEE PROCESSES).

McCain has opposed the earmarking process because it is being abused, he does not oppose all underlying projects that have been earmarked.

Even Obama, with 123 days of Senate service understands the difference.

One should note that for all of ElV's bleatings of fiscal conservatism and such, it NOWHERE plays into his calculus of considerations of what he likes about Palin.

it only makes sense to allow the people to choose people who have the same culture, religion

Well, I'm of a specific Christian religion and ethnic group that rarely has politicians of that background in Washington, outside of a few people. I guess this makes me a bit better able to recognize my own interests, since the chances of being able to vote for "one of my own" is low (but non-zero). I don't have a problem voting for a candidate who is of a different religion than I am because hardly any candidates ever are.

Actually, Palin has vastly more executive experience than McCain, ElV, so maybe she should be in the top spot?

Of course, experience isn't the only thing we look for in a presidential candidate, and I for one don't think the experience argument against Palin is a very good one. We've certainly had less experienced presidents and VPs than her. Don't forget, one of the most experienced VPs out there is Dick Cheney and I wouldn't exactly advocate for his inclusion on any ticket.

The larger issue with Palin, for me, and I think for most Americans, is that

1) she's a radical conservative on nearly every issue
2) she has a long history of ethical violations and outright corruption
3) she lied to the country in her very first speech as nominee (about the "bridge to nowhere")
4) she was a member and/or supporter of an overtly anti-American organization

Wish it away all you want, anon and ElV. The pork hypocrisy thing has legs and so does the rest of this. The base might like her fine, but beyond that the Palin nomination is the greatest political train wreck since the 1980s.

He's made pork a central tenant of his campaign.

Really! How much rent is Porky paying?

El V, I've been following the Palin story with a fascination that's positively unhealthy, and while I have seen some disreputable stuff (mostly from a small minority of pseudonymous commenters, some C-list bloggers, and the Idiosyncratic Narcissist Sometimes-Conservative Andrew Sullivan), you are the very first blogger or blog commenter I've seen to give a flying fnck about Mr. Palin's 1980's DUI conviction. The only place I've seen it mentioned before is in mainstream news stories where the McCain campaign mentions it as being something Palin was eager to disclose early in on the "vetting" process. Nobody else cares about it, which may be why Palin was so quick to disclose it.

Still, I could be wrong. Could you please point me to someone, anyone, of any prominence giving a crap about Mr. Palin's 1980's DUI? Thanks in advance.

Last night, Orrin Hatch brought up the Palin pregnancy thing to Andrea Mitchell without any prompting at all. She asked him a pretty general question about Palin, like "hey you like this gal or what?" and Hatch launched into this rant about the media and the pregnancy and how the teen preggers thing was just okey dokey with him. Mitchell, who is pretty sympathetic to GOPers, looked at him like he had just had an aneurysm.

I think the wingnutters are pretty happy to have these little domestic scandals front and center. It is a fantastic cloud for the real scary shit that Palin is really about that would pretty handily ruin the election for McBush. They are professional whiners. Look for them to be crying about how unfair it all is, as if CNN got her daughter pregant on purpose!