Surrendie didn’t know if he should be sad because Saracuda did so well last night, or happy because so many in the Liberal media were so flumoxed by her performance that they were forced to surrender and say “She done good!” But, Surrendie loves how they have done it. Consider an Internet front page story at the Washington Post

Sarah Palin looked as though she had prepared for her appearance at the vice presidential debate last night by studying Tina Fey’s impressions of her on “Saturday Night Live.” She twinkled and winked and piled on the perkiness, a “darn right” here and an “I’ll betcha” there.

At the same time, Palin seemed determined to banish thoughts of her as airheaded and inexperienced; she was really debating her own public image rather than Sen. Joe Biden. She subverted the whole purpose of the exercise by merely repeating the key points of her running mate, Sen. John McCain, and ignoring questions that called for more specific answers.

No mention from Tom Shales about the lies of Joe Biden. Who is Tom Shales? He is a Style writer for the Washington Post. Nice to know the Post apparently has no political writers sober enough after Palin’s performance (and, to be honest, let’s not forget that Biden did do very well himself, certainly better then either McCain or Obama) to write a decent article. Shales’ article is considered “top news,” if you look at that link.

Despite the even toned article at the LA Times, one which tends to avoid the zingers by Palin, their headline says it all for those searching for some medical mary jane in the newsroom

Palin and Biden spar in VP debate but neither deals a knockout

And, how can we ignore the Grey Lady?

Gov. Sarah Palin made it through the vice-presidential debate on Thursday without doing any obvious damage to the Republican presidential ticket. By surviving her encounter with Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and quelling some of the talk about her basic qualifications for high office, she may even have done Senator John McCain a bit of good, freeing him to focus on the other troubles shadowing his campaign.

It was not a tipping point for the embattled Republican presidential ticket, the bad night that many Republicans had feared. But neither did it constitute the turning point the McCain campaign was looking for after a stretch of several weeks in which Senator Barack Obama seemed to be gaining the upper hand in the race. Even if he no longer has to be on the defensive about Ms. Palin, Mr. McCain still faces a tough environment with barely a month until the election, as he acknowledged hours before the debate by effectively pulling his campaign out of Michigan, a Democratic state where Mr. McCain’s advisers had once been optimistic of victory.

So, she did fantastic, but, it don’t mean nuttin’.

Exit question: other then perhaps at Fox News, the Washington Times, and a few other media outlets, are there any in the Credentialed Media who do not have hangovers like Cuba just won the World Cup?

Head on over to Stop The ACLU for my quick thoughts and a post debate roundup from around the Interwebz. Easier then trying to update on three sites.

The New York Times took on Joe Biden in my previous post, painting him as a great guy who just wants to give his family a good life in a pleasant, beautiful domicile. How do they treat Sarah Palin? Let’s check the headline: As Governor, Palin Has Focused on Developing State’s Resources. The underlying premise is “sure, she did well in Alaska, that state with the tiny population out in the middle of nowhere, but, does that mean she knows anything else? Can she really run a country? Does she have the right stuff? Does anyone really know anything about her?”

When Gov. Sarah Palin meets Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday in the vice-presidential debate, even her fellow Alaskans might hear for the first time some of her views on health care reform, education policy and other issues of state government.

Yeah, because that 80% + approval rating was based on the wind. Let’s go to the next two paragraphs.

In her 22 months in office, Ms. Palin has not addressed many of those matters in a significant way, pursuing a narrower agenda rooted in Alaska’s resource-based economy.

Ms. Palin has approved increased spending for education and the elderly, sued the federal government for listing the polar bear as a threatened species, and pushed for a bill that would have reduced state regulation of new medical facilities.

Hmm, that seems like education and healthcare policy. Here we go, though, the red meat for the liberals who read the paper

But by and large, oil and gas issues have dominated her tenure.

“You can’t think of another area where there’s been another drive or initiative coming out of the administration with the same level of intensity,” said Scott Goldsmith, a professor of economics at the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Big Oil! Or, should that be written, Evil Big Oil! Obviously, she must be intimately linked with Big Oil, the destroyer of Gaia, the Bane of Liberal Existence, those evil people who jack gas prices up and harm the economy at the expense of the Middle Class! Yawn.

Interestingly, they actually do something they have yet to do for Barack Obama or Joe Biden, and delve in to several of the issues Sarah has been involved in, healthcare, education (remember, Alaskans do not know her positions, according to the Times), trade, environment, elderly, budget, and social issues. In each and every one, the Times attempts to put in a little rejoinder that spins what Palin did as not so good. Consider environment, which is not so subtle

Ms. Palin has taken positions that reflect her support for developing Alaska’s natural resources. Her views are largely in line with those of voters in her state, but not with environmentalists.

And, in Liberal World, to hell with the 80%+ people who support her, the environmentalists come first.

A good chunk of the story involves the oil industry, no surprise considering how important it is to Alaska, but, the constant mentions are, of course, meant to tie her to that EVIL industry, even when she is taking them on.

I’m waiting for the story on her house.

The headlines of both articles gives a good idea of where the Times wants to push the reader. We’ll start with Sarah Palin, then get to the Gaffe Master after the jump

Past Debates Show a Confident Palin, at Times Fluent but Often Vague

Not since Dan Quayle took the stage in 1988 have debate expectations for a major party candidate been as low as they will be on Thursday for Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Setting the stage for calling Palin a lightweight

A newcomer to the national scene, Ms. Palin has given little indication that she has been engaged in a serious way in the pressing national and international issues of the day.

Sorry she couldn’t have been in the Senate since 1972 like Biden, and having failed 3 attempts for the Democrat nomination, or having been chosen as a VP with more experience then the top of the ticket. I doubt Clinton was real concerned with national or international issues while governor of Arkansas, either.

But a review of a handful of her debate performances in the race for governor in 2006 shows a somewhat different persona from the one that has emerged since Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, named Ms. Palin as the vice-presidential nominee a month ago.

Ms. Palin, a former mayor who had become a whistle-blower about ethical misconduct in state government, held her own in those debates. (There were almost two dozen in the general election alone; she skipped some, and not all were recorded.)

Some pleasantries thrown in to give an appearance of journalism, rather then opinionation

Her debating style was rarely confrontational, and she appeared confident. In contrast to today, when she seems unversed on several important issues, she demonstrated fluency on certain subjects, particularly oil and gas development.

But just as she does now, Ms. Palin often spoke in generalities and showed scant aptitude for developing arguments beyond a talking point or two. Her sentences were distinguished by their repetition of words, by the use of the phrase “here in Alaska” and for gaps. On paper, her sentences would have been difficult to diagram.

John Bitney, the policy director for her campaign for governor and the main person who helped prepare her for debates, said her repetition of words was “her way of running down the clock as her mind searches for where she wants to go.”

These tendencies could fuzz her meaning and lead her into linguistic cul-de-sacs. She often used less than her allotted time and ended her answers abruptly.

Um, uh, um, well, you see, Jim, ah, what I mean is.  No mention of The Messiah’s constant and consistent speaking manner when his friend Mr. Teleprompter is off having a drink after a hard days work from the Times, or any other Credentialed Media outlet.

But, you can tell what the Grey Lady wants to do: paint Palin as a bubble headed lightweight. Period.

And on to Biden

I’m glad that someone in the Liberal media is finally taking on Barack Obama’s 20 years of attendence at a church founded on Black Liberation doctrine, mentored by Black Liberation docrine pastors such as Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger, surrounded by people in the pews who believe in Black Liberation doctrine, and reading about Black Liberation doctrine in all those copies of Trinity Church’s newsletter that featured articles about Barack Obama.

Huh? No? I missread it? How about that? Palin treads carefully between fundamentalist beliefs and public policy

Soon after Sarah Palin was elected mayor of the foothill town of Wasilla, Alaska, she startled a local music teacher by insisting in casual conversation that men and dinosaurs coexisted on an Earth created 6,000 years ago — about 65 million years after scientists say most dinosaurs became extinct — the teacher said.

After conducting a college band and watching Palin deliver a commencement address to a small group of home-schooled students in June 1997, Wasilla resident Philip Munger said, he asked the young mayor about her religious beliefs.

Palin told him that “dinosaurs and humans walked the Earth at the same time,” Munger said. When he asked her about prehistoric fossils and tracks dating back millions of years, Palin said “she had seen pictures of human footprints inside the tracks,” recalled Munger, who teaches music at the University of Alaska in Anchorage and has regularly criticized Palin in recent years on his liberal political blog, called Progressive Alaska.

I do not hold those same beliefs, but, apparently, the Los Angeles Times is requiring a religious test for Palin. Her beliefs in what the Bible actually says are a cause for concern for the Times, though, apparently, it is OK for Barack H. Obama to sit in the pews of Trinity and listen to preachers talk about how Jesus was Black, and Whites are NOT practicing real Christianity.

Remember one thing, though: most of this is all hearsay. He said she said. Almost no direct quotes from Palin herself.

Palin has attended a number of prayer sessions with pastors and has quietly sought their guidance, but she is often mum on matters of faith in high-profile public forums.

Her aides say Palin’s caution at the intersection of religion and governance is a studied effort to share her beliefs without forcing them on Alaska.

In other words, the LA Times is digging for relevance, attempting to create an issue without direct, concrete evidence. Of course, Palin’s anti-abortion stance is good enough for the Times to label her a fundamentalist, and outside the mainstream.

Furthermore, they disengenuously misquote her, as so much of the media has, on Iraq

In one of her more controversial appearances in the Wasilla church, Palin told a group of ministry students in June to pray that sending troops to Iraq was part of “God’s plan.”

No no no.

But, you know, she wanted to allow Intelligent Design to be taught in schools, if they wanted to! How horrible to allow different viewpoints to be taught!

But, then, it has gotten so bad on the left that they are seeking counseling for their Palin Derangement Syndrome.

It is getting rather repetetive writing that this liberal and that progressive, this blog and that news outlet, have lost it, as their journey down Unhinged Lane has ended and they are now traveling down Interstate 5150. Once again, here we go!

Naomi Wolf: The Battle Plan II: Sarah “Evita” Palin, the Muse of the Coming Police State

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah “Evita” Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand “Palin Power.” A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections — but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you have freedom.

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites (”the heart of America is on display”) and realized Bush’s speechwriters were writing her — not McCain’s — speeches. I heard her tell George Bush’s lies — not McCain’s — to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners — this is Rove-Cheney’s enthusiastic S and M, not McCain’s, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit –but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

Not too long in the past, people would be put in a straight jacket and given a medical hold for going around the bend like this. Now, they get writing gigs at the Huffington Post.

I tell ya, this has got to leave a mark

Sarah Palin bests Joseph Biden 47% to 44% in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up for the presidency, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone surve.

In a Biden vs. Palin race, 84% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats back the Alaskan, and 75% of Democrats and 13% of Republicans support the senator. Unaffiliated voters give Palin the edge 45% to 39%.

And, I understand that most people surveyed thought Biden was really cranky and crusty.

Speaking of polls

• It is dead even in Va. again
• Pennsylvania is a dead heat now (big!)
• Barry’s lead in Colorado is down to 1
• Ohio has stretched to McCain by 4
• Florida has stretched to Mac by 7
• Utah is still massively McCain
• And in New York (drum roll, please), Barry’s lead is down to 5 (B46-M41)

What desparate attack ad will Barry and Co. come up with next cause of this?

By now, I am sure that you have heard the Barry lipstick gaffe

Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin’s new “change” mantra.

“You can put lipstick on a pig,” he said as the crowd cheered. “It’s still a pig.”

“You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It’s still gonna stink.”

“We’ve had enough of the same old thing.”

Was Barry calling Palin a pig? Only Barry knows for sure, everyone else is just guessing. The way I see it is (means I am guessing, too), Barry used the line, based on Palin’s joke “How can you tell the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.” as a way of making fun of the line, insulting the McCain camps call that they are the real change in this campaign, and taking a personal shot at Palin. And then he could sit back and say “hey! I wasn’t talking about Palin, but y’alls policies! You people are nuts!” But, in politics, perception is paramount. How the heck does Barry think he got the Democrat nod? Sure wasn’t because of his stellar political record.

Regardless, Barry, most people know a veiled personal smear when they hear one. The Palinator is driving even Barry bat-sh*t crazy. Maybe we should let Palin debate Barry one on one once. See who’s got the gravitas.

Many on the Left are having their standard hissy fit over the McCain claim, and video, that Obama wants to force kindergardeners to have sex education. Sites such as TPM, Huffington Post, and Pam’s House Blend. The ad states

Obama’s one accomplishment? Legislation to teach “comprehensive sex education” to kindergartners. Learning about sex before learning to read?

The Barry Camp, and their Internet palls, are claiming that is not what the legislation was about. Really?

The criticism of Obama on sex education stems from his work in the Illinois state senate on legislation which would have taken the state’s entire sex education standards, which related to 6th through 12th grade, and applied them to all of K-12.

And, yes, parents would be able to opt out. But, why even offer sex ed to children that young? What kind of disturbed mind even considers that sex ed classes are appropriate for children that young? Well, disturbed minds on the Left. Basic sex ed shouldn’t even be taught till about the 7th grade, as kids are coming in to their sexual changes.

“But it’s the right thing to do,” Obama continued, “to provide age-appropriate sex education, science-based sex education in schools.”

What does Barry consider “age-appropriate” for 5 year olds?

And for the unhinged, spittle laced world view screed, Jonathan Freedland at the Guardian (the same paper that featured Charlie Brooker calling for Dubya’s assassination if he won in 2004) is the “man” of the hour

(Headline) The world’s verdict will be harsh if the US rejects the man it yearns for

An America that disdains Obama for his global support risks turning current anti-Bush feeling into something far worse (end headline)

Of course I know that even to mention Obama’s support around the world is to hurt him. Incredibly, that large Berlin crowd damaged Obama at home, branding him the “candidate of Europe” and making him seem less of a patriotic American. But what does that say about today’s America, that the world’s esteem is now unwanted? If Americans reject Obama, they will be sending the clearest possible message to the rest of us - and, make no mistake, we shall hear it.

No, really, he is serious. As I am sure many progressives around the world are about Barry. And, they are exposing exactly why Barack H. Obama is unqualified to be president of the United States of America, namely, because it is the most powerful position in the world, and we do not need a barely done nothin’ but write a few memoirs guy in the Oval office.

They do not have any bikini picks of Sarah Palin (cheap traffic bait phrase), but, this article reads more like those from other countries about her, which treat her with respect, rather then the batsh*t crazy unhinged sexist we have been getting in most of the American Credentialed Media. SF Gate: Palin Floats Like a Butterfly, Stings Like a Bee

The Democrats are in trouble. Sarah Palin has totally changed the dynamics of this campaign.

Period.

Palin’s speech to the GOP National Convention on Wednesday has set it up so that the Republicans are now on offense and Democrats are on defense. And we don’t do well on defense.

Suddenly, Palin and John McCain are the mavericks and Barack Obama and Joe Biden are the status quo, in a year when you don’t want to be seen as defending the status quo.

From taxes to oil drilling, Democrats are now going to have to start explaining their positions.

Whenever you start having to explain things, you’re on defense.

Exactly. And all those in the Nutroots are whining about Palin not going on the news shows while Barry was scared to go on Fox for 19 months, Biden is still avoiding Fox, and when they show up on the other shows, they are given softball questions like “why isn’t Sarah on Meet The Press?”

Willie Brown, who wrote the story for the SF Chronicle, continues

She didn’t have to prove she was “of the people.” She really is the people.

She is. She has the story of a regular person, rather then some crazy “hey, I was a community organizer, and I am qualified to be president because I have been running for president. Oh, ignore that I have never done anything in any office, never taken any chances, just been a good party foot soldier” story.

And remember, the Palin bandwagon needs to roll for only two months.

You know one of the reasons average people love Palin? Because she was not the safe pick (like Biden!). She was exotic, politically speaking. Picking her was saying “you know what? Screw England, we want to be our own country” and “yeah, we could let the Confederacy go, but, damn, we are one country” and “yeah, Hitler is no real threat to us, but, we can’t let Europe go down.” She wasn’t the safe pick, like a guy who has been sitting in the Senate voting with the Democrat majority and the liberal base 94% of the time, making him the 3rd most liberal Senator in 2007.

Americans like challenges. Americans like when people take chances. Americans like to be ahead of the curve. They don’t like to play it safe.

Perhaps I am just reading way too much into this story, but, hey, it is the NY Times, after all: In Palin’s Life and Politics, Goal to Follow God’s Will

Shortly after taking office as governor in 2006, Sarah Palin sent an e-mail message to Paul E. Riley, her former pastor in the Assembly of God Church, which her family began attending when she was a youth. She needed spiritual advice in how to do her new job, said Mr. Riley, who is 78 and retired from the church.

“She asked for a biblical example of people who were great leaders and what was the secret of their leadership,” Mr. Riley said.

That’s it! She must be one of those fundies the Left keeps going on about! How dare she seek guidance from a religious leader, rather then the United Nations, The Goracle, focus groups, the wind, and abortion rights groups! Or The One!

He wrote back that she should read again from the Old Testament the story of Esther, a beauty queen who became a real one, gaining the king’s ear to avert the slaughter of the Jews and vanquish their enemies. When Esther is called to serve, God grants her a strength she never knew she had.

Mr. Riley said he thought Ms. Palin had lived out the advice as governor, and would now do so again as the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee.

Uh oh, looks like Palin wants to establish a theocracy. How could McCain have picked someone who is bound to be the Grand Inquisitor?

What’s the Vegas line running on when the Left picks up on that meme?

“God has given her the opportunity to serve,” he said. “And God has given her the strength to carry out her goals.”

Fundy!

“The churches that Sarah has attended all believe in a literal translation of the Bible,” Ms. (Janet) Kincaid said. “Her principal ethical and moral beliefs stem from this.”

As opposed to Obama, a Christian (some even claim born again), and Joe Biden, a self professed Catholic. Both believe heavily in abortion on demand. I can’t find any Christian or Catholic leader of repute who supports abortion on demand, not does the Bible support abortion.

Faith and a loathing of abortion on demand doesn’t seem to be above Sarah’s pay grade.