Smoke and mirrors and moose

Frank Rich in the NYT:

We still don’t know a lot about Palin except that she’s better at delivering a speech than McCain and that she defends her own pregnant daughter’s right to privacy even as she would have the government intrude to police the reproductive choices of all other women. Most of the rest of the biography supplied by her and the McCain camp is fiction.

She didn’t say “no thanks” to the "Bridge to Nowhere" until after Congress had already abandoned it but given Alaska a blank check for $223 million in taxpayers’ money anyway. [She kept the loot.]

Far from rejecting federal pork, she hired lobbyists to secure her town a disproportionate share of earmarks ($1,000 per resident in 2002, 20 times the per capita average in other states).

Though McCain claimed “she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities,” she has never issued a single command as head of the Alaska National Guard.

As for her "executive experience" as mayor, she told her hometown paper in Wasilla, Alaska, in 1996, the year of her election: "It’s not rocket science. It’s $6 million and 53 employees."

Her much-advertised crusade against officials abusing their office is now compromised by a bipartisan ethics investigation into charges that she did the same.

How long before we learn she never shot a moose?

There's lies, damn lies, and nearly every claim made by McCain and Palin.

By picking a virtual unknown, the Republicans felt they could define Palin and create a person who doesn't exist. This is in perfect keeping with their long time practice of attempting to create reality with no respect whatsoever for actual reality.

They are trying to absolutely control Palin's image and make her a work of fiction. This is why they are throwing tantrums at the very idea that the press is trying to find out more about her, actually asking questions (the very IDEA!) and expecting Palin to.... you know... do what every politician in the past hundred years or so have done.... submit to questions by the press. Which happens to be how citizens here in America are supposed to be able to make informed judgements.

By arrogantly arguing that the press is irrelevant, the McCain campaign is spitting in the eye of the public by saying that they don't deserve to have candidates for the highest offices in the land answer questions about their qualifications and views.

Is this Russia circa 1970? China perhaps? All we should expect is carefully managed campaign events and scripted speeches? The Republicans really think they can get away with that incredibly dictatorial and un-American attitude?

Yep. They want to manage Palin as if she were a purely invented personality.. exactly the kind of hollow celebrity they worked so hard to paint Obama as.

If anyone needed any more indesputable proof that she's nowhere near ready for prime time... just witness the fact that the McCainiacs are keeping her in virtual seclusion, trotting her out to give canned speeches, then hustling her back to the secure location to try to teach her all the things they've spent the last week frantically arguing she already knows.

PURE, USDA Grade A Republican bullshit.

Let's see if being even more brazenly phony and deceptive will win them the White House one more time.