PJ: How many times and in how many ways can New Jersey Governor Christie say that he will not run for President before the GOP and the media believe him? How many times will Sarah Palin tease her fans about her intentions to run for the 'title' of President (I guess it's just like the Miss Alaska title)... a title that she says she can easily win but that she does not need in order to affect change...until her fan-base walks away to support someone else?
The Economist
Lexington
Open goal, useless strikers
After Rick Perry stumbles, the Republican cry goes out for a substitute
HERE is your match report so far, translated into soccer to spare American readers the pain of having their sporting metaphors mangled by foreigners.
It is the penalty shoot-out. Barack Obama stands in a corner of the goal mouth, his leg shackled to a heavy anvil labelled “the economy”. One by one, the Republican presidential candidates line up to shoot at goal. One by one, they trip up and collapse in a heap even before they have had a chance to connect with the ball. The latest figure spread-eagled haplessly on the field is that of Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, who has managed to go from hero to zero after less than two months in the race.
Well, perhaps not quite zero. In fact most polls continue to put him at or near the top of the Republican field, where he took the place of Mitt Romney soon after throwing his Stetson into the ring in August. Our Economist/YouGov poll this week gives him 14% of likely primary voters, just behind Mr Romney’s 15%. But the latest televised debate, in Orlando, Florida, on September 22nd, saw him turn in the second of two dreadful performances in a row, and this has set back his campaign in two separate ways.
First, the man whose big advantage over the too-slick Mr Romney was supposed to be the authenticity of his conservatism has somehow managed to let his rivals paint him as a cringing liberal. He stands accused of allowing the children of illegal immigrants to pay the lower, subsidised in-state tuition fees at Texas’s public universities, and of ordering Texas to inflict what Michele Bachmann, the congresswoman from Minnesota who has appointed herself Joan of Arc in this campaign, calls “a government injection” on “innocent little 12-year-old girls”.
Mr Perry pleads mitigation. In the case of the university fees he says he was handicapped by the possession of a heart (why punish the children of illegal immigrants for their parents’ actions?). As for the injection, he hoped the HPV vaccine would save more women from cervical cancer. But no hint of leniency towards illegal immigrants goes unpunished by a certain sort of Republican activist, so the star of the Lone Star candidate is waning. The unexpected winner of the Florida straw poll, held soon after the Orlando debate, was Herman Cain, a fiery black Baptist preacher and former boss of Godfather’s Pizza.
In theory, Mr Perry has ample time to recover. Straw polls do not count for much; a mere six weeks ago Mrs Bachmann was basking in her own victory in the Ames straw poll in Iowa, only to be eclipsed as soon as Mr Perry made his late eruption into the race. And although the Texan has so far fumbled his attempt to hurt Mr Romney by identifying him, accurately, as the governor who introduced an early form of “Obamacare” into Massachusetts, he will have plenty more chances to do better: the candidates will next debate in New Hampshire in mid-October.
However, proving himself to be a more conservative conservative than Mr Romney is no longer Mr Perry’s most urgent task, because allowing himself to be outflanked from the right was only the smaller of his two recent setbacks. His bigger problem now is that he has lost his aura as an effective campaigner.
Tested for the first time on a national stage, the serial winner of elections in Texas has been found strangely wanting. After his dismal debates, party panjandrums no longer take his famed electoral smarts for granted. He had no defence when Mr Romney hammered him for calling the Social Security (pensions) system on which millions of Americans rely unconstitutional and a “Ponzi scheme”. He fluffed his counter-attack on Mr Romney’s introduction of compulsory health insurance. Asked how he would respond to a nuclear emergency in Pakistan, he mumbled about “the Pakistani country”, as if the existence of this exotic land of 190m Muslims had only just become known in Texas.
Though Mr Perry has since returned to the attack, many Republicans now question whether their latest striker can hit that enticingly open goal. What if the slippery Mr Obama, his head brimming with arcane incumbent’s knowledge about Pakistan and other tricksy stuff, runs circles around the tongue-tied Texan? Or if Mr Perry reminds voters of that other Texan, the unlamented George Bush junior? Hence the renewed enthusiasm for drafting Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey (already at 15% in our poll). He had called himself unready, but promised this week to reconsider—and gave a suspiciously presidential speech at the Ronald Reagan library in California, lamenting the failure of Americans to “live up to our own tradition of exceptionalism”.
Mr Christie has delighted Republicans in New Jersey by cutting spending and bashing the public-sector unions. But like Mr Perry he has taken some moderate positions, in his case on gun control as well as immigration, that might antagonise the conservative base. And the move to draft a governor who has had less than two years in office this late in the campaign cannot but smack of desperation. It underlines the fear in the Republican camp that none of the candidates already in the field looks completely certain to beat even an economy-shackled Mr Obama.
Democrats for Perry
Except, perhaps, for the patient Mr Romney. Interestingly, there are Democrats who say quietly that they are no less disappointed than conservatives by Mr Perry’s recent mistakes. That is because Mr Perry’s errors make it likelier that the Republicans will settle for Mr Romney; and Mr Romney, a centrist who everyone knows is only masquerading as a conservative until the primaries are over, might actually go on to beat Mr Obama in the general. The great flip-flopper does not convince the conservative base. He does not excite much of the wider electorate either. But nor does he scare them. And with the economy the way it is, that may be all it takes to win the White House in 2012.
http://www.economist.com/node/21530979
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Monday, September 26, 2011
UK: Class politics in the US
The Economist
Lexington
Classlessness in America
The uses and abuses of an enduring myth
Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition
“DO YOU recognise the irreconcilable class antagonism between workers and capitalists that exists under the present economic system?” That is question one on the membership application form of the Socialist Labour Party of America. A helpful note explains that all questions must be answered Yes for an application to be considered. This insistence on ideological purity may explain why the fortunes of the party have disappointed of late. Though it can trace its history as far back as 1876, when it was known as the Workingmen’s Party, no less an authority than Wikipedia pronounces it “moribund”.
Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the budget committee in the House of Representatives, accused Barack Obama this week of waging “class warfare” by suggesting that millionaires should pay at least the same rate of tax as the common man. But, really, would any president risk declaring class war and following the Workingmen’s Party into oblivion? Not only is social class supposed not to exist in America, it is almost a dirty word—“America’s forbidden thought”, in the words of one sociologist.
Anyone who does commit the solecism of talking or writing about class in America is assailed at once by a problem of definition. Asking Americans which class they belong to does not get you very far, since almost all Americans are sure that they belong to the middle. The last time the Pew Research Centre asked, in a poll in 2008, 91% of respondents put themselves in the upper-middle, middle or lower-middle class. Confusion about class is compounded by America’s habit of defining the white “working class” not by income or occupation, as in Europe, but by the lack of a college degree. That is a pretty odd approach (Mark Twain observed that cauliflower is cabbage with a college education) given that many workers without a degree earn a decent income and consider themselves part of the middle too.
American talk about class differs from Europe’s in another way. The country does not have a broad political movement on the left. Its trade unions never gave rise to a social-democratic party like Britain’s Labour, for example. This is not to say that America has had no left at all. It has seen radicals galore. But Michael Kazin, co-editor of Dissent and author of a new history (“American Dreamers”), says its left did not focus chiefly on economic issues. From the mid-20th century, after all, America seemed to find a way for manual workers with only a high-school education to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle. The New Left of the 1960s and 1970s assumed (times have changed) that growth would take care of economic needs and devoted its energies to racial and sexual equality instead. The left has contributed to terrific success in such areas—from the abolition of slavery to the formal end this week of the ban on gays serving openly in the military. But Mr Kazin concludes that it was far more successful when it sought to expand personal liberty than when it struggled to advance the collective might of workers and the poor.
Envy and common sense
If class is America’s “forbidden thought”, and not even the left has been strongly driven by economic egalitarianism, is it a tactical error for Mr Obama to keep calling on millionaires and billionaires, hedge-fund managers, the owners of corporate jets and other assorted fat cats to pay higher taxes in hard times? It is certainly misleading of him to imply that America will be able to tame its deficit and protect entitlements by raising taxes on the rich alone: the maths suggests that the middle class will have to pay too. But that does not make it bad politics. America is not so exceptional that its people are impervious to the sin of envy, or to commonsensical notions about what is fair. A Gallup poll published on September 20th found that those who supported raising the taxes of the rich outnumbered opponents by 66% to 32%.
Besides, American politics is not as free of class as politicians think. It is often said that Americans do not choose between parties for mainly economic reasons. This is a myth. Larry Bartels, a political scientist who defines class by income rather than education, concluded in his 2008 book, “Unequal Democracy”, that “traditional class politics is alive and well” in America. His data show that the Republicans are in general the party of the rich and Democrats the party of the poor. Bill Clinton steered clear of class politics, especially in his second term when he moved sharply to the centre. But in 2000 Al Gore injected a strongly populist tone into his campaign. “They’re for the powerful, we’re for the people,” he said in accepting the Democratic presidential nomination. And, pace Mr Kazin, the left has just scored a gigantic victory in the form of the health-insurance subsidies that the poor will receive from Mr Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
One of the main exhibits of those who say America is free of class war is the behaviour of the white working class, which voted—against its economic interest, you might think—both for Ronald Reagan and against Mr Obama in last year’s mid-terms. But Mr Bartels finds the poorest parts of this group solidly Democratic. And even if the rest of the white working class is in the Republican column for now, it may not stay there for long. These particular voters, says Henry Olsen of the American Enterprise Institute, “fear the consequences of an untrammelled market and wonder, as they have since the Great Depression, if conservatives really have their best interests at heart.” To put it simply, Mr Olsen concludes, “working-class voters believe in capitalism, but they also believe in the importance of a social safety net.”
Mr Obama is careful not to use the “c” word himself. It is his foes who accuse him of being a socialist. His own message is that Americans are all in the same boat but that the rich can row a bit harder. You do not have to be a member of the moribund Socialist Labour Party of America to see the political appeal of that.
http://www.economist.com/node/21530100
Lexington
Classlessness in America
The uses and abuses of an enduring myth
Sep 24th 2011 | from the print edition
“DO YOU recognise the irreconcilable class antagonism between workers and capitalists that exists under the present economic system?” That is question one on the membership application form of the Socialist Labour Party of America. A helpful note explains that all questions must be answered Yes for an application to be considered. This insistence on ideological purity may explain why the fortunes of the party have disappointed of late. Though it can trace its history as far back as 1876, when it was known as the Workingmen’s Party, no less an authority than Wikipedia pronounces it “moribund”.
Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the budget committee in the House of Representatives, accused Barack Obama this week of waging “class warfare” by suggesting that millionaires should pay at least the same rate of tax as the common man. But, really, would any president risk declaring class war and following the Workingmen’s Party into oblivion? Not only is social class supposed not to exist in America, it is almost a dirty word—“America’s forbidden thought”, in the words of one sociologist.
Anyone who does commit the solecism of talking or writing about class in America is assailed at once by a problem of definition. Asking Americans which class they belong to does not get you very far, since almost all Americans are sure that they belong to the middle. The last time the Pew Research Centre asked, in a poll in 2008, 91% of respondents put themselves in the upper-middle, middle or lower-middle class. Confusion about class is compounded by America’s habit of defining the white “working class” not by income or occupation, as in Europe, but by the lack of a college degree. That is a pretty odd approach (Mark Twain observed that cauliflower is cabbage with a college education) given that many workers without a degree earn a decent income and consider themselves part of the middle too.
American talk about class differs from Europe’s in another way. The country does not have a broad political movement on the left. Its trade unions never gave rise to a social-democratic party like Britain’s Labour, for example. This is not to say that America has had no left at all. It has seen radicals galore. But Michael Kazin, co-editor of Dissent and author of a new history (“American Dreamers”), says its left did not focus chiefly on economic issues. From the mid-20th century, after all, America seemed to find a way for manual workers with only a high-school education to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle. The New Left of the 1960s and 1970s assumed (times have changed) that growth would take care of economic needs and devoted its energies to racial and sexual equality instead. The left has contributed to terrific success in such areas—from the abolition of slavery to the formal end this week of the ban on gays serving openly in the military. But Mr Kazin concludes that it was far more successful when it sought to expand personal liberty than when it struggled to advance the collective might of workers and the poor.
Envy and common sense
If class is America’s “forbidden thought”, and not even the left has been strongly driven by economic egalitarianism, is it a tactical error for Mr Obama to keep calling on millionaires and billionaires, hedge-fund managers, the owners of corporate jets and other assorted fat cats to pay higher taxes in hard times? It is certainly misleading of him to imply that America will be able to tame its deficit and protect entitlements by raising taxes on the rich alone: the maths suggests that the middle class will have to pay too. But that does not make it bad politics. America is not so exceptional that its people are impervious to the sin of envy, or to commonsensical notions about what is fair. A Gallup poll published on September 20th found that those who supported raising the taxes of the rich outnumbered opponents by 66% to 32%.
Besides, American politics is not as free of class as politicians think. It is often said that Americans do not choose between parties for mainly economic reasons. This is a myth. Larry Bartels, a political scientist who defines class by income rather than education, concluded in his 2008 book, “Unequal Democracy”, that “traditional class politics is alive and well” in America. His data show that the Republicans are in general the party of the rich and Democrats the party of the poor. Bill Clinton steered clear of class politics, especially in his second term when he moved sharply to the centre. But in 2000 Al Gore injected a strongly populist tone into his campaign. “They’re for the powerful, we’re for the people,” he said in accepting the Democratic presidential nomination. And, pace Mr Kazin, the left has just scored a gigantic victory in the form of the health-insurance subsidies that the poor will receive from Mr Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
One of the main exhibits of those who say America is free of class war is the behaviour of the white working class, which voted—against its economic interest, you might think—both for Ronald Reagan and against Mr Obama in last year’s mid-terms. But Mr Bartels finds the poorest parts of this group solidly Democratic. And even if the rest of the white working class is in the Republican column for now, it may not stay there for long. These particular voters, says Henry Olsen of the American Enterprise Institute, “fear the consequences of an untrammelled market and wonder, as they have since the Great Depression, if conservatives really have their best interests at heart.” To put it simply, Mr Olsen concludes, “working-class voters believe in capitalism, but they also believe in the importance of a social safety net.”
Mr Obama is careful not to use the “c” word himself. It is his foes who accuse him of being a socialist. His own message is that Americans are all in the same boat but that the rich can row a bit harder. You do not have to be a member of the moribund Socialist Labour Party of America to see the political appeal of that.
http://www.economist.com/node/21530100
Canada: A more detailed review of The Rogue
PJ: Most reviews that I have read about this book have been written by people who have not even read The Rogue, relying on sensational reports from the National Enquirer instead. This reviewer has actually turned the pages and has chosen to focus attention on the actual content versus the more salacious aspects of the tome.
The Star
Book sets out to find Palin — and destroy her
By Mitch Potter
WASHINGTON—Weighing in at 318 pages, The Rogue isn’t merely an act of character assassination — it is one long, hard, steel spike through the political heart of Sarah Palin.
Whatever remote chance remained that the conservative firebrand might one day end up in the White House is poised to unravel Tuesday, when the controversial Joe McGinniss book hits stores.
Put aside the jaw-dropping allegations of cocaine and adultery. Forget about the claim Palin and former NBA player Glen Rice had a one-night tryst back in 1987, when she was a single young reporter and he was a university basketball player. And never mind the insider accounts of the almost Biblical vengeance Sarah and Todd Palin visited upon enemies, real or perceived, during the march from Wasilla, Alaska, to where they reside today, at the astronomically high-paying intersection of Washington and Hollywood.
The Sarah Palin portrayed in The Rogue is nothing short of a born-again hypocrite — and one so self-obsessed, yet so utterly unaware of herself, as to not even know it.
The best-kept secret in Palin’s closet, according to McGinniss, is not the sordid storyline of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll, but the extent to which Palin believes herself chosen by God to be the next president of the United States.
The “evangelical Kool-Aid” of extreme religiosity percolates throughout The Rogue, with Palin confidantes — some named, some not — detailing the out-there end-times theology they scrambled to keep a lid on, lest it go public.
For instance: God created Earth 6,000 years ago and populated it with mankind and dinosaurs. “Mankind had survived, dinosaurs had not. End of story,” writes McInnis.
Except the rest of the story is that these are the end-times, with The Rapture and the return of Jesus imminent. Palin is quoted by fellow Christian Phil Munger as certain all this will transpire in her lifetime. “Maybe you can’t see that but I can, and it guides me every day,” she says.
Yet within the fractious Palin household, another portrait emerges.
“There was no religion,” an insider reveals. “There was nothing about God. There was no Christ. Nobody prayed. No Bibles. No crosses. None of that was ever there. Never.”
Instead, this Palin home is a portrait in dysfunction, where days began with screaming demands for divorce amid children neglected by parents who themselves behaved like emotionally stunted teenagers.
A home from whence a miserable Todd Palin, in the early years at least, escaped regularly for extramarital trysts; and where Sarah is said to have returned the favour, at least once, to get her wayward hubby back in line.
A home from whence the Palin’s eldest son was allegedly shipped off to Iraq to rid the family of potential public-relations powder keg of an OxyContin-chomping vandal prone to violence.
A number of Alaskans share on-the-record close encounters with Planet Palin. But much of the most damning detail is presented under the cloak of anonymity that McGinniss claims to have provided reluctantly. The continuing fear of Palin retribution, the author argues, is alive and well in Wasilla.
One example: The author was already famously at rhetorical war with the Palins, having audaciously rented the house next to theirs in order to write the book. One day, McGinniss called in a local handyman, who arrived with cardboard duct-taped over his truck’s licence plates. “I don’t need any bulls--t from those paranoid f--kers next door,” the handyman explained.
McGinniss claims to have taken not a single photograph or recording of his neighbours during his time in Wasilla. But when Palin first learned the identity of her neighbour, a quick Facebook update alerted her online loyalists and suddenly, the 67-year-old author, his wife, his agent and his publisher were besieged with death threats, sparking national headlines
McGinniss, whose previous writings on Alaska were critically acclaimed, describes how some locals came to his rescue. The “Wasilla Welcome Wagon” included one group who brought him a flag and his choice of six handguns. Another stranger arrived with keys and a map to his house, telling McGinniss he was welcome anyone. “Hell, I’ve even got an AK-47 you might like.”
The rented house was unfurnished and after buying two armchairs, McGinniss struggled to find someone willing to deliver, lest the Palins find out. Finally, Dewey Taylor, a retired schoolteacher, dropped off the furniture. The next night his truck had its driver’s-side window blown out as Taylor slept.
McGinnis describes the Palin practice of vanquishing enemies as a “potentially dangerous character flaw.”
“She has no sense of proportion, no ability to modulate her response. She’s over-the-top in all directions: rah-rah cheerleading for those she supports, spewing vitriolic condemnation of anyone who challenges her.
“If this is how she reactions, as a private citizen, to an unwelcome neighbour next door, what would she do as president if the Iranian government suddenly irked her?”
But McGinniss attributes much of that mindset as a consequence of life under father Chuck Heath, unearthing a story of how her father once whipped up an “ugly, violent mob” in Wasilla to protest the firing of a school principal — his close friend — who was fired for ignoring allegations that another teacher had molested as many as 17 girls in his Grade 3 class.
Said Pat O’Hara, a former school board member caught in the fracas: “Sarah learned from her father; if someone disagrees with you or does something you don’t like, annihilate first, ask questions later.”
McGinniss portrays Todd Palin’s transformation from a hard-drinking, womanizing, cocaine-binging good ol’ boy to an emasculated but vindictive presence today. “Clearly, being reduced to the role of chihuahua carried around in a rich lady’s purse is proving stressful for Todd.”
And he awakens doubts about the real Sarah Palin, gathering anecdotes that suggest she is neither a fisher nor much of a hockey mom, nor even the least bit interested in actual governance, having ruled Alaska partway through a single term with a mostly blank appointment book as she leafed through the pages of People.
The most scathing indictment, however, McGinniss saves for what Palin loves to call the “lamestream” media: Rather than taking her down, the media circus continually catches and resets Palin to a place of otherwise inexplicable prominence.
“Sarah Palin practises politics as lap dance, and we’re the suckers who pay the price,” he concludes.
“Members of our jaded national press corps eagerly stuff hundred-dollar bills in her G-string, even as they wink at one another to show that they don’t take her seriously.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1055449--book-sets-out-to-find-palin-and-destroy-her?bn=1
The Star
Book sets out to find Palin — and destroy her
By Mitch Potter
WASHINGTON—Weighing in at 318 pages, The Rogue isn’t merely an act of character assassination — it is one long, hard, steel spike through the political heart of Sarah Palin.
Whatever remote chance remained that the conservative firebrand might one day end up in the White House is poised to unravel Tuesday, when the controversial Joe McGinniss book hits stores.
Put aside the jaw-dropping allegations of cocaine and adultery. Forget about the claim Palin and former NBA player Glen Rice had a one-night tryst back in 1987, when she was a single young reporter and he was a university basketball player. And never mind the insider accounts of the almost Biblical vengeance Sarah and Todd Palin visited upon enemies, real or perceived, during the march from Wasilla, Alaska, to where they reside today, at the astronomically high-paying intersection of Washington and Hollywood.
The Sarah Palin portrayed in The Rogue is nothing short of a born-again hypocrite — and one so self-obsessed, yet so utterly unaware of herself, as to not even know it.
The best-kept secret in Palin’s closet, according to McGinniss, is not the sordid storyline of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll, but the extent to which Palin believes herself chosen by God to be the next president of the United States.
The “evangelical Kool-Aid” of extreme religiosity percolates throughout The Rogue, with Palin confidantes — some named, some not — detailing the out-there end-times theology they scrambled to keep a lid on, lest it go public.
For instance: God created Earth 6,000 years ago and populated it with mankind and dinosaurs. “Mankind had survived, dinosaurs had not. End of story,” writes McInnis.
Except the rest of the story is that these are the end-times, with The Rapture and the return of Jesus imminent. Palin is quoted by fellow Christian Phil Munger as certain all this will transpire in her lifetime. “Maybe you can’t see that but I can, and it guides me every day,” she says.
Yet within the fractious Palin household, another portrait emerges.
“There was no religion,” an insider reveals. “There was nothing about God. There was no Christ. Nobody prayed. No Bibles. No crosses. None of that was ever there. Never.”
Instead, this Palin home is a portrait in dysfunction, where days began with screaming demands for divorce amid children neglected by parents who themselves behaved like emotionally stunted teenagers.
A home from whence a miserable Todd Palin, in the early years at least, escaped regularly for extramarital trysts; and where Sarah is said to have returned the favour, at least once, to get her wayward hubby back in line.
A home from whence the Palin’s eldest son was allegedly shipped off to Iraq to rid the family of potential public-relations powder keg of an OxyContin-chomping vandal prone to violence.
A number of Alaskans share on-the-record close encounters with Planet Palin. But much of the most damning detail is presented under the cloak of anonymity that McGinniss claims to have provided reluctantly. The continuing fear of Palin retribution, the author argues, is alive and well in Wasilla.
One example: The author was already famously at rhetorical war with the Palins, having audaciously rented the house next to theirs in order to write the book. One day, McGinniss called in a local handyman, who arrived with cardboard duct-taped over his truck’s licence plates. “I don’t need any bulls--t from those paranoid f--kers next door,” the handyman explained.
McGinniss claims to have taken not a single photograph or recording of his neighbours during his time in Wasilla. But when Palin first learned the identity of her neighbour, a quick Facebook update alerted her online loyalists and suddenly, the 67-year-old author, his wife, his agent and his publisher were besieged with death threats, sparking national headlines
McGinniss, whose previous writings on Alaska were critically acclaimed, describes how some locals came to his rescue. The “Wasilla Welcome Wagon” included one group who brought him a flag and his choice of six handguns. Another stranger arrived with keys and a map to his house, telling McGinniss he was welcome anyone. “Hell, I’ve even got an AK-47 you might like.”
The rented house was unfurnished and after buying two armchairs, McGinniss struggled to find someone willing to deliver, lest the Palins find out. Finally, Dewey Taylor, a retired schoolteacher, dropped off the furniture. The next night his truck had its driver’s-side window blown out as Taylor slept.
McGinnis describes the Palin practice of vanquishing enemies as a “potentially dangerous character flaw.”
“She has no sense of proportion, no ability to modulate her response. She’s over-the-top in all directions: rah-rah cheerleading for those she supports, spewing vitriolic condemnation of anyone who challenges her.
“If this is how she reactions, as a private citizen, to an unwelcome neighbour next door, what would she do as president if the Iranian government suddenly irked her?”
But McGinniss attributes much of that mindset as a consequence of life under father Chuck Heath, unearthing a story of how her father once whipped up an “ugly, violent mob” in Wasilla to protest the firing of a school principal — his close friend — who was fired for ignoring allegations that another teacher had molested as many as 17 girls in his Grade 3 class.
Said Pat O’Hara, a former school board member caught in the fracas: “Sarah learned from her father; if someone disagrees with you or does something you don’t like, annihilate first, ask questions later.”
McGinniss portrays Todd Palin’s transformation from a hard-drinking, womanizing, cocaine-binging good ol’ boy to an emasculated but vindictive presence today. “Clearly, being reduced to the role of chihuahua carried around in a rich lady’s purse is proving stressful for Todd.”
And he awakens doubts about the real Sarah Palin, gathering anecdotes that suggest she is neither a fisher nor much of a hockey mom, nor even the least bit interested in actual governance, having ruled Alaska partway through a single term with a mostly blank appointment book as she leafed through the pages of People.
The most scathing indictment, however, McGinniss saves for what Palin loves to call the “lamestream” media: Rather than taking her down, the media circus continually catches and resets Palin to a place of otherwise inexplicable prominence.
“Sarah Palin practises politics as lap dance, and we’re the suckers who pay the price,” he concludes.
“Members of our jaded national press corps eagerly stuff hundred-dollar bills in her G-string, even as they wink at one another to show that they don’t take her seriously.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1055449--book-sets-out-to-find-palin-and-destroy-her?bn=1
Friday, September 23, 2011
UK: Outside of the US Obama is viewed as pro-Israel
PJ: I am amazed when I read and hear so many false claims in the US media about President Obama. The President has always been pro-Israel as well as pro-peace process; he has even demonstrated an intelligent response to stability in the region. You wouldn't necessarily know that when you hear pundits and GOP White House contenders. Conservatives cry about the liberal media but it is they who are winning the message war. Obama's positions are often distorted by false claims by the right wing and his accomplishments (of which there are many) are swept under the rug by a media that seems to march to the tune of the Tea Party lest they be called 'liberal' or 'lamestream'.
The Economist
Feeling Jerusalem
Sep 19th 2011, 16:21 by J.F. | ATLANTA
JOHN HEILEMANN'S article about how Barack Obama came to be painted as anti-Israel is a story about politics that conceals a story about American manufacturing: specifically, to use Mr Heilemann's own phrase, the manufacturing of "perfect bullshit". As Mr Heilemann pungently writes, the Obama administration has "never wavered in going balls-out for Israel". They blocked demands for an independent investigation into the Gaza flotilla raid that left nine activists dead. Security and military agreements between America and Israel remain strong. Mr Obama himself pressured Egypt into freeing Israeli diplomats stuck inside the besieged embassy in Cairo. And he has promised to veto Palestine's statehood vote at the UN Security Council. Even so, he has been pilloried for being "anti-Israel", whatever that means. The three leading Republican presidential candidates have accused him of "throwing Israel under the bus", "thumbing his nose" at Israel and for inviting a curse (points awarded for successfully guessing which candidate used the cliche, which one fears curses and which saw Mr Obama's actions as picking a fight).
Now, we can speculate about why such criticism has stuck, despite Mr Obama's robust support for Israel. Part of it is certainly that Mr Obama lacks the Manichean, with-us-or-against-us worldview of his predecessor; he is much cooler in temperament and rhetoric, and not just toward Israel, either. But I also think Mr Heilemann makes too little of the president's background: if he were President Bobby Howard O'Brien instead of Barack Hussein Obama, there might be some strong policy disagreements coming from the right, but I don't believe the anti-Israel narrative would have taken hold. Images like this would not go straight to the reptile brain. These same nasty innuendos floated around even before Mr Obama's election.
But absent from Mr Heilemann's piece, from the criticism of Mr Obama's would-be rivals, and indeed from the pro-Israel right more broadly is a compelling explanation of what the president should do, should have done, or should be doing.
Here, for instance, Jennifer Rubin works herself into a lather over whether the Obama administration is demanding that Israel agree to withdraw to the 1967 borders before commencing negotiations with the Palestinians. She then stresses over whether the administration is demanding that Israel negotiate with Hamas. Clearly it is doing neither. The 1967 borders have long been recognised as the rough border—not the precise shape, but the approximate one—between two independent states. Does she think that's wrong, and if so, what is her realistic alternative? And here is Jonathan Tobin, doing some serious intellectual acrobatics to blame Mr Obama for the impending Palestinian statehood vote. Apparently, the president failed to realise that Palestinian leaders were too weak to negotiate, and then failed to press them hard enough to negotiate. He "pick[ed] fights" with Binyamin Netanyahu over the status of Jerusalem—for which read "dared to mildly object to but did nothing to stop some settlement construction is East Jerusalem". And somehow, by speaking in support of statehood (as his two predecessors had done), Mr Obama convinced Mahmoud Abbas (who is too weak to negotiate, remember) to abandon the American-sponsored peace process. So it's all Mr Obama's fault.
To critics of the president's Israel policy, I'd like to know, what should the president do? And "stand with Israel" is not a suggestion, it's a slogan.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/09/america-and-israel
The Economist
Feeling Jerusalem
Sep 19th 2011, 16:21 by J.F. | ATLANTA
JOHN HEILEMANN'S article about how Barack Obama came to be painted as anti-Israel is a story about politics that conceals a story about American manufacturing: specifically, to use Mr Heilemann's own phrase, the manufacturing of "perfect bullshit". As Mr Heilemann pungently writes, the Obama administration has "never wavered in going balls-out for Israel". They blocked demands for an independent investigation into the Gaza flotilla raid that left nine activists dead. Security and military agreements between America and Israel remain strong. Mr Obama himself pressured Egypt into freeing Israeli diplomats stuck inside the besieged embassy in Cairo. And he has promised to veto Palestine's statehood vote at the UN Security Council. Even so, he has been pilloried for being "anti-Israel", whatever that means. The three leading Republican presidential candidates have accused him of "throwing Israel under the bus", "thumbing his nose" at Israel and for inviting a curse (points awarded for successfully guessing which candidate used the cliche, which one fears curses and which saw Mr Obama's actions as picking a fight).
Now, we can speculate about why such criticism has stuck, despite Mr Obama's robust support for Israel. Part of it is certainly that Mr Obama lacks the Manichean, with-us-or-against-us worldview of his predecessor; he is much cooler in temperament and rhetoric, and not just toward Israel, either. But I also think Mr Heilemann makes too little of the president's background: if he were President Bobby Howard O'Brien instead of Barack Hussein Obama, there might be some strong policy disagreements coming from the right, but I don't believe the anti-Israel narrative would have taken hold. Images like this would not go straight to the reptile brain. These same nasty innuendos floated around even before Mr Obama's election.
But absent from Mr Heilemann's piece, from the criticism of Mr Obama's would-be rivals, and indeed from the pro-Israel right more broadly is a compelling explanation of what the president should do, should have done, or should be doing.
Here, for instance, Jennifer Rubin works herself into a lather over whether the Obama administration is demanding that Israel agree to withdraw to the 1967 borders before commencing negotiations with the Palestinians. She then stresses over whether the administration is demanding that Israel negotiate with Hamas. Clearly it is doing neither. The 1967 borders have long been recognised as the rough border—not the precise shape, but the approximate one—between two independent states. Does she think that's wrong, and if so, what is her realistic alternative? And here is Jonathan Tobin, doing some serious intellectual acrobatics to blame Mr Obama for the impending Palestinian statehood vote. Apparently, the president failed to realise that Palestinian leaders were too weak to negotiate, and then failed to press them hard enough to negotiate. He "pick[ed] fights" with Binyamin Netanyahu over the status of Jerusalem—for which read "dared to mildly object to but did nothing to stop some settlement construction is East Jerusalem". And somehow, by speaking in support of statehood (as his two predecessors had done), Mr Obama convinced Mahmoud Abbas (who is too weak to negotiate, remember) to abandon the American-sponsored peace process. So it's all Mr Obama's fault.
To critics of the president's Israel policy, I'd like to know, what should the president do? And "stand with Israel" is not a suggestion, it's a slogan.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/09/america-and-israel
UK: GOP debate recap--republican audience boos a soldier
The Guardian
GOP presidential debate: Rick Perry struggles in the spotlight
Republican frontrunner Rick Perry, under fire on immigration policies, gave a hesitant performance in the latest GOP debate
By Richard Adams
Texas governor Rick Perry struggled to reply to his critics in the latest debate between Republican contenders, revealing an Achilles heel that is undermining his march towards the party's presidential nomination.
As in the two previous debates since he entered the race, Perry's hesitant performance saw him bested on stage by his main rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who twice shrugged off Perry's garbled efforts to attack his record, saying dismissively: "Nice try."
Despite nine candidates on stage before a rowdy audience in Orlando, the interplay between the two men dominated the debate, with both accusing the other of changing their positions.
For Perry, the lacklustre performance raises fears among Republicans that he would fail to dent Barack Obama in the high-profile presidential debates during the 2012 general election.
Romney, though, was polished and more fluent, especially as the debate wore on, although he avoided making detailed responses.
The Texas governor also saw his otherwise impeccable conservative credentials come under fire, over his policy of allowing the children of illegal immigrants to benefit from cheaper in-state tuition fees to attend university.
Perry hotly defended the policy, accusing critics of seeking to punish children for the sins of their parents.
"If you say that we should not educate children that have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought here by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," said Perry – an attitude unlikely to go down well with the Republican base he is seeking to win over.
Perry said Romney was guilty of supporting the Obama administration's flagship "Race to the Top" education programme, saying: "Being in favour of the Obama Race to the Top – that is not conservative."
The debate again revealed an ugly side of the Republican party, with at least one audience member loudly booing a member of the US armed forces who appeared on video to ask a question.
The soldier, who revealed that he was gay, asked the candidates how they would respond to the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell," the policy barring gays and lesbians from serving openly in the US military that ended this week.
The booing followed similar scenes in the previous debates, when audience members applauded Perry's tally of executions as governor and another shouted "Yes!" at the prospect of the uninsured dying from lack of healthcare.
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman joked that Romney and Perry were bludgeoning each other but the other candidates failed to make much of their opportunities in the third debate within three weeks.
The most memorable line of the night, though, came from former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson. Discussing the Obama administration's attempts at economic stimulus, Johnson said:
My next-door neighbour's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this administration.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/23/gop-presidential-debate-romney-perry
GOP presidential debate: Rick Perry struggles in the spotlight
Republican frontrunner Rick Perry, under fire on immigration policies, gave a hesitant performance in the latest GOP debate
By Richard Adams
Texas governor Rick Perry struggled to reply to his critics in the latest debate between Republican contenders, revealing an Achilles heel that is undermining his march towards the party's presidential nomination.
As in the two previous debates since he entered the race, Perry's hesitant performance saw him bested on stage by his main rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, who twice shrugged off Perry's garbled efforts to attack his record, saying dismissively: "Nice try."
Despite nine candidates on stage before a rowdy audience in Orlando, the interplay between the two men dominated the debate, with both accusing the other of changing their positions.
For Perry, the lacklustre performance raises fears among Republicans that he would fail to dent Barack Obama in the high-profile presidential debates during the 2012 general election.
Romney, though, was polished and more fluent, especially as the debate wore on, although he avoided making detailed responses.
The Texas governor also saw his otherwise impeccable conservative credentials come under fire, over his policy of allowing the children of illegal immigrants to benefit from cheaper in-state tuition fees to attend university.
Perry hotly defended the policy, accusing critics of seeking to punish children for the sins of their parents.
"If you say that we should not educate children that have come into our state for no other reason than they've been brought here by no fault of their own, I don't think you have a heart," said Perry – an attitude unlikely to go down well with the Republican base he is seeking to win over.
Perry said Romney was guilty of supporting the Obama administration's flagship "Race to the Top" education programme, saying: "Being in favour of the Obama Race to the Top – that is not conservative."
The debate again revealed an ugly side of the Republican party, with at least one audience member loudly booing a member of the US armed forces who appeared on video to ask a question.
The soldier, who revealed that he was gay, asked the candidates how they would respond to the repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell," the policy barring gays and lesbians from serving openly in the US military that ended this week.
The booing followed similar scenes in the previous debates, when audience members applauded Perry's tally of executions as governor and another shouted "Yes!" at the prospect of the uninsured dying from lack of healthcare.
Former Utah governor Jon Huntsman joked that Romney and Perry were bludgeoning each other but the other candidates failed to make much of their opportunities in the third debate within three weeks.
The most memorable line of the night, though, came from former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson. Discussing the Obama administration's attempts at economic stimulus, Johnson said:
My next-door neighbour's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this administration.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/23/gop-presidential-debate-romney-perry
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Middle East: The men who crashed the world's economies
PJ: As the GOP campaigns on the platform of reducing regulations (once again), it is important to know what created the financial crash that threw the US and much of the world into the worst economic recession since the great depression. As millions remain jobless and as others struggle to make ends meets, and as the rich continue to thrive and the very players on Wall Street who caused the crash are raking in millions, the GOP wants to return to the very policies that created the mess in the first place.
Tune in to this Al Jazeera sponsored broadcast--times are listed below.
Al Jazeera
The men who crashed the world
The first of a four-part investigation into a world of greed and recklessness that led to financial collapse.
In the first episode of Meltdown, we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.
But how did it all go so wrong?
Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.
Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.
All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse.
Meltdown is a four-part investigation that takes a closer look at the people who brought down the financial world. It can be seen on Al Jazeera English from Tuesday, September 20, at the following times GMT: Tuesday: 2000; Wednesday: 1200; Thursday: 0100; Friday: 0600; Saturday: 2000; Sunday: 1200; Monday: 0100; Tuesday: 0600.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/2011914105518615434.html
Tune in to this Al Jazeera sponsored broadcast--times are listed below.
Al Jazeera
The men who crashed the world
The first of a four-part investigation into a world of greed and recklessness that led to financial collapse.
In the first episode of Meltdown, we hear about four men who brought down the global economy: a billionaire mortgage-seller who fooled millions; a high-rolling banker with a fatal weakness; a ferocious Wall Street predator; and the power behind the throne.
The crash of September 2008 brought the largest bankruptcies in world history, pushing more than 30 million people into unemployment and bringing many countries to the edge of insolvency. Wall Street turned back the clock to 1929.
But how did it all go so wrong?
Lack of government regulation; easy lending in the US housing market meant anyone could qualify for a home loan with no government regulations in place.
Also, London was competing with New York as the banking capital of the world. Gordon Brown, the British finance minister at the time, introduced 'light touch regulation' - giving bankers a free hand in the marketplace.
All this, and with key players making the wrong financial decisions, saw the world's biggest financial collapse.
Meltdown is a four-part investigation that takes a closer look at the people who brought down the financial world. It can be seen on Al Jazeera English from Tuesday, September 20, at the following times GMT: Tuesday: 2000; Wednesday: 1200; Thursday: 0100; Friday: 0600; Saturday: 2000; Sunday: 1200; Monday: 0100; Tuesday: 0600.
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/meltdown/2011/09/2011914105518615434.html
Israel: Palestians unhappy with Obama
Haaretz
Palestinians disappointed by Obama's UN speech
PLO Secretary-General, members of PLO delegation in Washington say U.S. president's speech was 'double standard' when he praised the Arab Spring but did not express support for Palestinian state.
By Natasha Mozgovaya and Reuters
A senior Palestinian official voiced disappointment at U.S. President Barack Obama's speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, saying he had hoped for an expression of support for Palestinian freedom.
Obama urged Israel and the Palestinians to relaunch direct peace talks as he made a last-ditch attempt to avert a UN crisis over Palestinian statehood and pull his Middle East policy back from the brink of diplomatic disaster.
He also touched on the "Arab Spring" uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East, remarking how "change had come to Egypt and to the Arab World."
Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), told Reuters there was "a gap between praising the struggle of Arab peoples for the sake of freedom and between an abstract call for negotiations between us and the Israelis."
"We expected to hear that the freedom of the Palestinian people was key for the Arab Spring," he said. "Freedom should cover the [whole] region."
Moreover, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the PLO delegation in Washington, told Haaretz that she was very disappointed with Obama's speech.
"Listening to [Obama], you would think it was the Palestinians who occupy Israel," she told Haaretz.
"He presented a double standard when he disassociated the Arabs' fight for their freedom in the region from the Palestinian freedom fighters, who deal with the occupation for 63 years… what we heard is precisely why we are going to the UN."
Abbas has vowed to submit to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon an application for full UN membership for Palestinian statehood when he addresses the General Assembly session in New York on Friday despite U.S. and Israeli opposition.
Israel and the United States oppose the idea of a Palestinian UN push, which Israel says is aimed at delegitimizing it. The Palestinians say it will enable direct peace talks to talk place between two equal, sovereign states.
"We are here at the United Nations to call for an active international intervention, including by America, to lay down the foundations for serious negotiations and foremost the recognition of a Palestinian state," Abed Rabbo said.
"It is time that the policies of slipping away (from peace commitments), and continued annexation (of Palestinian land) be stopped," he said.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/palestinians-disappointed-by-obama-s-un-speech-1.385871
Palestinians disappointed by Obama's UN speech
PLO Secretary-General, members of PLO delegation in Washington say U.S. president's speech was 'double standard' when he praised the Arab Spring but did not express support for Palestinian state.
By Natasha Mozgovaya and Reuters
A senior Palestinian official voiced disappointment at U.S. President Barack Obama's speech to the United Nations on Wednesday, saying he had hoped for an expression of support for Palestinian freedom.
Obama urged Israel and the Palestinians to relaunch direct peace talks as he made a last-ditch attempt to avert a UN crisis over Palestinian statehood and pull his Middle East policy back from the brink of diplomatic disaster.
He also touched on the "Arab Spring" uprisings across North Africa and the Middle East, remarking how "change had come to Egypt and to the Arab World."
Yasser Abed Rabbo, secretary-general of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), told Reuters there was "a gap between praising the struggle of Arab peoples for the sake of freedom and between an abstract call for negotiations between us and the Israelis."
"We expected to hear that the freedom of the Palestinian people was key for the Arab Spring," he said. "Freedom should cover the [whole] region."
Moreover, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the PLO delegation in Washington, told Haaretz that she was very disappointed with Obama's speech.
"Listening to [Obama], you would think it was the Palestinians who occupy Israel," she told Haaretz.
"He presented a double standard when he disassociated the Arabs' fight for their freedom in the region from the Palestinian freedom fighters, who deal with the occupation for 63 years… what we heard is precisely why we are going to the UN."
Abbas has vowed to submit to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon an application for full UN membership for Palestinian statehood when he addresses the General Assembly session in New York on Friday despite U.S. and Israeli opposition.
Israel and the United States oppose the idea of a Palestinian UN push, which Israel says is aimed at delegitimizing it. The Palestinians say it will enable direct peace talks to talk place between two equal, sovereign states.
"We are here at the United Nations to call for an active international intervention, including by America, to lay down the foundations for serious negotiations and foremost the recognition of a Palestinian state," Abed Rabbo said.
"It is time that the policies of slipping away (from peace commitments), and continued annexation (of Palestinian land) be stopped," he said.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/palestinians-disappointed-by-obama-s-un-speech-1.385871
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
UK: If the Daily Mail can be believed (and I do mean IF), it may be the end of the road for Sarah Palin
PJ: While the Daily Mail is indeed a tabloid, it is embarrassing to have a potential presidential contender drug through the mud the way that Sarah Palin has been. If the McCain campaign had bothered to vet her in the first place, the nation would not have to suffer through the tabloids in this way.
Mounting evidence suggests that Mrs. Palin is an absolute fraud and did not really have the knowledge, intellect and integrity to hold any elected office. The sad thing is that people who have and still support her are simply supporting a mirage of their own invention.
Daily Mail
Sarah Palin could be set to lose both her marriage and her political career after the release of the explosive biography on the Tea Party darling.
The National Enquirer claims that friends close to the politician and her husband Todd say he is 'fed up' with the constant scandals that have plagued their marriage ever since she ran for vice president and is ready to file for a divorce.
As well as kissing goodbye to her marriage, it has also been alleged that her advisers have told her to kiss goodbye to the White House fearing a bid would be 'political suicide'.
In The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, the 47-year-old is accused of having a night of passion with a basketball star, snorting cocaine and having an affair with her husband's business partner - all allegations which are thought to have shattered Palin's White House dream.
A source close to the former vice presidential candidate said: 'Sarah Palin has been destroyed by Joe McGinniss' no-holds-barred biography. It exposed all her lies, cover-ups and secrets.
'As a result she has been told by her advisers that it would be political suicide to announce a White House candidacy. The press and her opponents would have a field day digging into the dirty details of her background.'
Brother: Chuck 'Chuckie' Heath Jr told friends that Todd and Sarah 'didn't have a marriage'
Brother: Chuck 'Chuckie' Heath Jr told friends that Todd and Sarah 'didn't have a marriage'
The bombshell book is said to have put the final nail in the coffin of her marriage, after Sarah's brother Chuckie was quoted saying his sister and Todd's marriage was over.
A friend told the National Enquirer: 'The final straw was McGinniss quoting Sarah's brother Chuckie telling a friend they don't have a marriage.
'Todd felt as if he was stabbed in the back by his own brother-in-law after 23 years of being married to the guy's sister, and having five kids together.'
It was revealed last week that former basketball player Glen Rice had a one-time fling with the Alaska governor when she was a news anchor for her local station and he was a junior at the University of Michigan.
The source told the Enquirer that Todd feels like he's been made a laughing stock as the hook up had become a joke on late night TV and was all over the internet.
He was also said to be 'fuming' over the biography's confirmation that his wife had an affair with his business partner Brad Hanson and that Todd dissolved their snowmobile dealership after learning of it.
Though both parties denied it at the time it came to light in October 2008, Palin's ex brother-in-law Mike Wooten allegedly confirmed it saying: 'Todd and Sarah were headed for divorce, but Sarah got pregnant soon after, so they decided to stay together.'
The new book also claims that Palin snortedcocaine off a 55-gallon oil drum and separately smoked marijuana in secret liaisons with one of her college professors.
The book's author Joe McGinniss moved in next door to the Palins in Alaska to dig dirt for his salacious biography.
In response, Todd Palin slammed the author as a 'stalker' who has a 'creepy obsession' with his wife after details of what was in the book were first leaked.
He said: 'This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife.
His book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo, and smears. Even The New York Times called this book "dated, petty," and that it "chases caustic, unsubstantiated gossip".
Mrs Palin, meanwhile, has been careful to avoid commenting.
The author writes that after college Mrs Palin developed a 'fetish' for black men.
She allegedly had a tryst with basketball star Glen Rice in her younger sister Molly's University of Alaska dorm room, while she was dating Todd and just nine months before the couple were married.
Mrs Palin got pregnant with Todd and they eloped in August 1988.
Their son Track, the oldest of five, was born eight months later in April 1989.
A friend said Mrs Palin spent the night with the basketball star but could not confirm whether they had sex, according to the National Enquirer.
'I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star,' a source told the magazine.
The athlete is said to have confirmed the night of passion in Mr McGinniss's book.
Mr Rice went on to have a huge career playing basketball in the NBA and was a three-timer All-Star.
The explosive book goes on to quote those who knew the family growing up, claiming Mrs Palin was a 'bad mum' who would lock herself in her room for hours on end asking not to be disturbed while her children cooked themselves dinner.
Sarah Palin was plucked from obscurity to be the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008.
The 'pitbull in lipstick' sparked a media storm after accepting the nomination, despite questions over her experience.
But she wowed the U.S. after a barn-storming speech in September 2008 in which she attacked critics for calling her 'small town'.
Six months: Palin is said to have had an affair with Brad Hanson, one of her husband's colleagues
Six months: Palin is said to have had an affair with Brad Hanson, one of her husband's colleagues
A former mayor of Wasilla before she became governor of Alaska, Palin stepped down after the Republican defeat in the presidential election.
The mother-of-five has remained tight-lipped on whether she would stand next year, but said she would likely make an announcement at the end of this month.
She has been overshadowed in recent months by Tea Party candidates including Michelle Bachmann.
The Republican, who has now associated herself with the Tea Party movement in the U.S., has been dogged by scandal since being selected as Senator John McCain's running mate in 2007.
There have also been frequent rumours that she is set to divorce her husband Todd, which have always been denied.
And she has faced accusations by the father of her daughter's child, Levi Johnston, that she wanted to keep Bristol's pregnancy a secret and adopt the child herself.
Palin has yet to declare whether she intends to run for election in next year's presidential race.
Joe McGinniss, 68, has written several political books including works on former president Richard Nixon and on Alaska.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2040110/Todd-Palin-file-divorce-advisers-tell-Sarah-White-House-dream-over.html
Mounting evidence suggests that Mrs. Palin is an absolute fraud and did not really have the knowledge, intellect and integrity to hold any elected office. The sad thing is that people who have and still support her are simply supporting a mirage of their own invention.
Daily Mail
Sarah Palin could be set to lose both her marriage and her political career after the release of the explosive biography on the Tea Party darling.
The National Enquirer claims that friends close to the politician and her husband Todd say he is 'fed up' with the constant scandals that have plagued their marriage ever since she ran for vice president and is ready to file for a divorce.
As well as kissing goodbye to her marriage, it has also been alleged that her advisers have told her to kiss goodbye to the White House fearing a bid would be 'political suicide'.
In The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, the 47-year-old is accused of having a night of passion with a basketball star, snorting cocaine and having an affair with her husband's business partner - all allegations which are thought to have shattered Palin's White House dream.
A source close to the former vice presidential candidate said: 'Sarah Palin has been destroyed by Joe McGinniss' no-holds-barred biography. It exposed all her lies, cover-ups and secrets.
'As a result she has been told by her advisers that it would be political suicide to announce a White House candidacy. The press and her opponents would have a field day digging into the dirty details of her background.'
Brother: Chuck 'Chuckie' Heath Jr told friends that Todd and Sarah 'didn't have a marriage'
Brother: Chuck 'Chuckie' Heath Jr told friends that Todd and Sarah 'didn't have a marriage'
The bombshell book is said to have put the final nail in the coffin of her marriage, after Sarah's brother Chuckie was quoted saying his sister and Todd's marriage was over.
A friend told the National Enquirer: 'The final straw was McGinniss quoting Sarah's brother Chuckie telling a friend they don't have a marriage.
'Todd felt as if he was stabbed in the back by his own brother-in-law after 23 years of being married to the guy's sister, and having five kids together.'
It was revealed last week that former basketball player Glen Rice had a one-time fling with the Alaska governor when she was a news anchor for her local station and he was a junior at the University of Michigan.
The source told the Enquirer that Todd feels like he's been made a laughing stock as the hook up had become a joke on late night TV and was all over the internet.
He was also said to be 'fuming' over the biography's confirmation that his wife had an affair with his business partner Brad Hanson and that Todd dissolved their snowmobile dealership after learning of it.
Though both parties denied it at the time it came to light in October 2008, Palin's ex brother-in-law Mike Wooten allegedly confirmed it saying: 'Todd and Sarah were headed for divorce, but Sarah got pregnant soon after, so they decided to stay together.'
The new book also claims that Palin snortedcocaine off a 55-gallon oil drum and separately smoked marijuana in secret liaisons with one of her college professors.
The book's author Joe McGinniss moved in next door to the Palins in Alaska to dig dirt for his salacious biography.
In response, Todd Palin slammed the author as a 'stalker' who has a 'creepy obsession' with his wife after details of what was in the book were first leaked.
He said: 'This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife.
His book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo, and smears. Even The New York Times called this book "dated, petty," and that it "chases caustic, unsubstantiated gossip".
Mrs Palin, meanwhile, has been careful to avoid commenting.
The author writes that after college Mrs Palin developed a 'fetish' for black men.
She allegedly had a tryst with basketball star Glen Rice in her younger sister Molly's University of Alaska dorm room, while she was dating Todd and just nine months before the couple were married.
Mrs Palin got pregnant with Todd and they eloped in August 1988.
Their son Track, the oldest of five, was born eight months later in April 1989.
A friend said Mrs Palin spent the night with the basketball star but could not confirm whether they had sex, according to the National Enquirer.
'I remember Sarah feeling pretty good that she'd been with a black basketball star,' a source told the magazine.
The athlete is said to have confirmed the night of passion in Mr McGinniss's book.
Mr Rice went on to have a huge career playing basketball in the NBA and was a three-timer All-Star.
The explosive book goes on to quote those who knew the family growing up, claiming Mrs Palin was a 'bad mum' who would lock herself in her room for hours on end asking not to be disturbed while her children cooked themselves dinner.
Sarah Palin was plucked from obscurity to be the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2008.
The 'pitbull in lipstick' sparked a media storm after accepting the nomination, despite questions over her experience.
But she wowed the U.S. after a barn-storming speech in September 2008 in which she attacked critics for calling her 'small town'.
Six months: Palin is said to have had an affair with Brad Hanson, one of her husband's colleagues
Six months: Palin is said to have had an affair with Brad Hanson, one of her husband's colleagues
A former mayor of Wasilla before she became governor of Alaska, Palin stepped down after the Republican defeat in the presidential election.
The mother-of-five has remained tight-lipped on whether she would stand next year, but said she would likely make an announcement at the end of this month.
She has been overshadowed in recent months by Tea Party candidates including Michelle Bachmann.
The Republican, who has now associated herself with the Tea Party movement in the U.S., has been dogged by scandal since being selected as Senator John McCain's running mate in 2007.
There have also been frequent rumours that she is set to divorce her husband Todd, which have always been denied.
And she has faced accusations by the father of her daughter's child, Levi Johnston, that she wanted to keep Bristol's pregnancy a secret and adopt the child herself.
Palin has yet to declare whether she intends to run for election in next year's presidential race.
Joe McGinniss, 68, has written several political books including works on former president Richard Nixon and on Alaska.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2040110/Todd-Palin-file-divorce-advisers-tell-Sarah-White-House-dream-over.html
Israel: Obama: "Ultimately, it is the Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side"
Haaretz
Obama: UN resolutions won't bring Israel-Palestinian peace
U.S. president addresses UN General Assembly, makes last-ditch effort to prevent Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas from submitting request to UN Security Council for full Palestinian membership on Friday.
By Natasha Mozgovaya and Reuters
U.S. President Barack Obama said Wednesday that peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will not come about through resolutions at the United Nations, issuing a warning to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ahead of his UN Security Council bid on Friday.
Addressing world leaders at the opening of a UN General Assembly session, Obama put the onus on the two sides to break a yearlong impasse and get back to the negotiating table.
"There is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations," Obama said.
"Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side," Obama continued. "Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians – not us – who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security; on refugees and Jerusalem."
Obama stressed that he believed in an independent Palestine, but one that will be achieved through negotiations with the Israelis.
"One year ago, I stood at this podium and called for an independent Palestine. I believed then – and I believe now – that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. But what I also said is that genuine peace can only be realized between Israelis and Palestinians themselves."
"Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine."
Obama will follow up his speech with separate meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders as he seeks to coax both parties back to direct peace talks.
At the same time, U.S. officials are conceding that they most likely will not be able to prevent Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas from moving forward with a request to the UN Security Council for full Palestinian membership.
Recognizing that Abbas seems intent to proceed, Obama is expected to privately ask the Palestinian leader to essentially drop the move for statehood recognition after Abbas delivers a formal letter of intent to the UN on Friday.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/obama-un-resolutions-won-t-bring-israel-palestinian-peace-1.385829
Obama: UN resolutions won't bring Israel-Palestinian peace
U.S. president addresses UN General Assembly, makes last-ditch effort to prevent Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas from submitting request to UN Security Council for full Palestinian membership on Friday.
By Natasha Mozgovaya and Reuters
U.S. President Barack Obama said Wednesday that peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will not come about through resolutions at the United Nations, issuing a warning to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas ahead of his UN Security Council bid on Friday.
Addressing world leaders at the opening of a UN General Assembly session, Obama put the onus on the two sides to break a yearlong impasse and get back to the negotiating table.
"There is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations," Obama said.
"Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side," Obama continued. "Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians – not us – who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and security; on refugees and Jerusalem."
Obama stressed that he believed in an independent Palestine, but one that will be achieved through negotiations with the Israelis.
"One year ago, I stood at this podium and called for an independent Palestine. I believed then – and I believe now – that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. But what I also said is that genuine peace can only be realized between Israelis and Palestinians themselves."
"Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine."
Obama will follow up his speech with separate meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders as he seeks to coax both parties back to direct peace talks.
At the same time, U.S. officials are conceding that they most likely will not be able to prevent Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas from moving forward with a request to the UN Security Council for full Palestinian membership.
Recognizing that Abbas seems intent to proceed, Obama is expected to privately ask the Palestinian leader to essentially drop the move for statehood recognition after Abbas delivers a formal letter of intent to the UN on Friday.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/obama-un-resolutions-won-t-bring-israel-palestinian-peace-1.385829
Middle East: Obama: Negotiations the way to Palestinian statehood and lasting peace
Al Jazeera
Obama: 'No short cut' to Middle East peace
US president tells UN that Israel and PLO both have "legitimate aspirations", but peace can only come via direct talks.
Barack Obama, the US president, has said "there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades" between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Obama expressed frustration at the failure of both parties to bridge their differences and at the Palestinians' decision to seek full membership of the UN through the Security Council this week.
The US has said it will veto such an effort.
While conceding both sides had "legitimate aspirations," Obama said peace would not come through statements and resolutions at the UN, but rather only through a resumption of direct negotiations.
He said the parties are the only ones who can agree on the issues that continue to divide them.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, were scheduled to meet with Obama in separate meetings after the speech.
Rallies continue
Earlier on Wednesday, tens of thousands of people gathered in Ramallah and Nablus in the occupied West Bank, in a show of support for the Palestinian bid to secure full membership at the UN.
"They [the US] have used different forms of pressure, threats, and many others, sending letters, sending ambassadors, etcetera, etcetera ... Amazing"
Al Jazeera's Cal Perry, reporting from Ramallah, said people rallying in there were aware of the diplomatic talks taking place in New York.
Thousands marched into Arafat Square in Ramallah, and schools and some businesses were shut as people came out in support of the bid for Palestinian statehood, he said.
In Nablus, some rallyists said it was a big day for Obama. "Lets hope he does not let us down," they said.
Recognising that Abbas is likely to proceed with his bud, Obama is expected to privately ask the Palestinian leader to essentially drop the move for statehood recognition after Abbas delivers a formal letter of intent to the UN on Friday, after his address to the UN General Assembly.
"The president will say, frankly, the same thing in private that he'll say in public, which is that we do not believe that this is the best course of action for achieving Palestinian aspirations," said Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser.
Obama's stand has surprised many Palestinians, with the Palestinian foreign minister saying he was "amazed" by the US efforts to persuade other countries not to support the UN bid.
"They have used different forms of pressure, threats, and many others, sending letters, sending ambassadors, etc, etc... Amazing," Riyad al-Maliki told Al Jazeera.
Talking to Al Jazeera's Gregg Carlstrom, senior Palestinian activist Mustafa Barghouti, also expressed his surprise over the US opposition.
"I think it is very strange that Obama will veto a bid for Palestinian statehood, when a year ago at the UN General Assembly he supported the idea," he said.
"Palestinian statehood will create a new political situation where Israeli will be occupying another country."
US hopes
The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), of whom Abbas is chairman, says it is pressing for statehood after talks with Israel led to nowhere.
The Obama administration say that only direct peace negotiations, not a UN vote, would allow the Palestinians to achieve the benefits of statehood.
The new approach being considered would see the "quartet" of the peace mediators, including the US, UN, European Union and Russia - issue a statement addressing both Palestinian and Israeli concerns and setting a timetable for a return to the long-stalled peace talks, officials close to the diplomatic talks said.
The statement would also endorse the idea of "two states for two peoples, Jewish and Palestinian", according to the AP news agency.
The White House appeared to hold out little hope that Abbas would not go ahead with the bid.
"President Abbas has indicated his determination to go to the Security Council, so we take him at his word on that," Rhodes said.
Enhanced observer
The simmering situation is far from the scenario Obama envisioned when he spoke at the UN one year ago.
"We should reach for what's best within ourselves," Obama said last September in pushing for negotiated agreement on a sovereign Palestinian state.
"If we do, when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations."
Should the Palestinian bid fail, Abbas could ask for a vote of the General Assembly for an enhanced observer status, which is enjoyed by others such as the Vatican, in which case no veto would be possible.
While UN recognition would have largely a symbolic value, the Palestinians argue that it would strengthen their hands in peace talks with Israel, especially on the final issues that divide them.
These are the precise location of the border, the final status of Jerusalem, the right of return of Palestinian refugees, water, and security.
On Wednesday, clashes broke out at the Qalandiya Crossing between Ramallah and Jerusalem.
Carlstrom reported that Israeli troops had fired tear gas to disperse an estimated 50 rock-throwing young people.
Several youths and one Israeli soldier were said to have been injured.
http://aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/09/201192114323726757.html
Obama: 'No short cut' to Middle East peace
US president tells UN that Israel and PLO both have "legitimate aspirations", but peace can only come via direct talks.
Barack Obama, the US president, has said "there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades" between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
In a speech to the UN General Assembly, Obama expressed frustration at the failure of both parties to bridge their differences and at the Palestinians' decision to seek full membership of the UN through the Security Council this week.
The US has said it will veto such an effort.
While conceding both sides had "legitimate aspirations," Obama said peace would not come through statements and resolutions at the UN, but rather only through a resumption of direct negotiations.
He said the parties are the only ones who can agree on the issues that continue to divide them.
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, were scheduled to meet with Obama in separate meetings after the speech.
Rallies continue
Earlier on Wednesday, tens of thousands of people gathered in Ramallah and Nablus in the occupied West Bank, in a show of support for the Palestinian bid to secure full membership at the UN.
"They [the US] have used different forms of pressure, threats, and many others, sending letters, sending ambassadors, etcetera, etcetera ... Amazing"
Al Jazeera's Cal Perry, reporting from Ramallah, said people rallying in there were aware of the diplomatic talks taking place in New York.
Thousands marched into Arafat Square in Ramallah, and schools and some businesses were shut as people came out in support of the bid for Palestinian statehood, he said.
In Nablus, some rallyists said it was a big day for Obama. "Lets hope he does not let us down," they said.
Recognising that Abbas is likely to proceed with his bud, Obama is expected to privately ask the Palestinian leader to essentially drop the move for statehood recognition after Abbas delivers a formal letter of intent to the UN on Friday, after his address to the UN General Assembly.
"The president will say, frankly, the same thing in private that he'll say in public, which is that we do not believe that this is the best course of action for achieving Palestinian aspirations," said Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser.
Obama's stand has surprised many Palestinians, with the Palestinian foreign minister saying he was "amazed" by the US efforts to persuade other countries not to support the UN bid.
"They have used different forms of pressure, threats, and many others, sending letters, sending ambassadors, etc, etc... Amazing," Riyad al-Maliki told Al Jazeera.
Talking to Al Jazeera's Gregg Carlstrom, senior Palestinian activist Mustafa Barghouti, also expressed his surprise over the US opposition.
"I think it is very strange that Obama will veto a bid for Palestinian statehood, when a year ago at the UN General Assembly he supported the idea," he said.
"Palestinian statehood will create a new political situation where Israeli will be occupying another country."
US hopes
The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), of whom Abbas is chairman, says it is pressing for statehood after talks with Israel led to nowhere.
The Obama administration say that only direct peace negotiations, not a UN vote, would allow the Palestinians to achieve the benefits of statehood.
The new approach being considered would see the "quartet" of the peace mediators, including the US, UN, European Union and Russia - issue a statement addressing both Palestinian and Israeli concerns and setting a timetable for a return to the long-stalled peace talks, officials close to the diplomatic talks said.
The statement would also endorse the idea of "two states for two peoples, Jewish and Palestinian", according to the AP news agency.
The White House appeared to hold out little hope that Abbas would not go ahead with the bid.
"President Abbas has indicated his determination to go to the Security Council, so we take him at his word on that," Rhodes said.
Enhanced observer
The simmering situation is far from the scenario Obama envisioned when he spoke at the UN one year ago.
"We should reach for what's best within ourselves," Obama said last September in pushing for negotiated agreement on a sovereign Palestinian state.
"If we do, when we come back here next year, we can have an agreement that will lead to a new member of the United Nations."
Should the Palestinian bid fail, Abbas could ask for a vote of the General Assembly for an enhanced observer status, which is enjoyed by others such as the Vatican, in which case no veto would be possible.
While UN recognition would have largely a symbolic value, the Palestinians argue that it would strengthen their hands in peace talks with Israel, especially on the final issues that divide them.
These are the precise location of the border, the final status of Jerusalem, the right of return of Palestinian refugees, water, and security.
On Wednesday, clashes broke out at the Qalandiya Crossing between Ramallah and Jerusalem.
Carlstrom reported that Israeli troops had fired tear gas to disperse an estimated 50 rock-throwing young people.
Several youths and one Israeli soldier were said to have been injured.
http://aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/09/201192114323726757.html
Australia: Palin: Put up or shut up
The Australian
Finally, Sarah Palin has to put up - or shut up
By Andrew Sullivan
THE next two weeks will determine the future of Sarah Palin. She has promised to make her mind up on whether she will run for the Republican nomination by the end of this month, and this week Joe McGinniss's devastating portrait, The Rogue, will be published.
That's quite a combination - and could lead to either the end of the Palin phenomenon or the beginning of its next and more lethal stage.
The initial reaction of Palin's husband, Todd, to nuggets of the book leaked to the National Enquirer suggests that, whatever happens, there will be fireworks.
Of McGinniss, he said: "This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife. His book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo and smears."
Really? McGinniss wrote the book because he believed the mainstream media didn't get close to the true weirdness, extremism and instability of the former vice-presidential candidate. He knew Alaska well, having written a bestseller, Going to Extremes, about it, and was steeped in political reporting, from The Selling of the President in 1969 to his brutal take-down of Ted Kennedy, The Last Brother. McGinniss is an aggressive reporter who knows how to get people to tell him things and is fearless about publishing what he finds. And he smelt the story the Washington press just didn't want to touch.
By chance, while looking for a place to stay when he was researching the book in Palin's home town of Wasilla, he was offered the rental property next door. Hardly believing his luck, he said yes - and got a blast of pre-publicity, courtesy of the Palins. Sarah accused McGinniss of spying on her and her kids, while Todd built a high wooden fence to obscure any view.
But McGinniss was not there to spy on the Palins, even if his location got under their skin. There's no evidence he ever behaved anything but impeccably. But once the news spread, almost everyone he met in Wasilla offered him a gun for self-defence. He declined.
What McGinnis found was a climate of fear of the Palins in Alaska, especially in Wasilla. The people he met had grown up with or worked for the Palins or knew them closely, and they were prepared to tell the true story: a woman of no executive skills, bored with government, incapable of mothering, connected to the most extreme versions of evangelical Christianity, invariably in one mood swing or another, and vicious and vindictive towards anyone who got in her way.
The gossipy bits of the book - including claims Palin had a fling with a 204cm black basketball star she was covering as a sports journalist, had an affair with her husband's business partner and experimented with cocaine and cannabis - will lead the news stories. But the heart of the story is more revealing. Palin seems consumed with ambition, but strangely uninterested in the business of government or, indeed, any deep knowledge of any difficult subject. She never drops a grudge. She sees no distinction between public office and private gain. She has lived a lonely life as an adult teenager, coming straight from work to skulk in her room, taking trips to department stores rather than going to meetings, her children left to fend for themselves.
It is a pitiable profile of a lost soul, who combines white-knuckle delusions with the bizarre practices and doctrines of the "dominionist" movement, seeking to expand Christian control over secular society. And she believes in witches - she had herself protected from them by a minister in her old church.
And, yes, the story of her last pregnancy is so bizarre it deserves a full chapter. She declared it at seven months, to universal disbelief from everyone, including her own staff. It is rare that a governor's pregnancy is immediately dismissed as impossible on the record in the local paper by her political colleagues. Photos of her in this period are rare (a handful exist and in some she barely looks three months pregnant).
At eight months, she agreed to fly to Texas for a speech. At 4am in a Texas hotel her waters broke, she says. Nonetheless, she gave the speech at noon, full of jokes, writing in her book the unforgettable words: "Big laughs. More contractions."
She refused to go to the nearby children's hospital to deliver a child who was already diagnosed with Down's syndrome, but travelled all the way back to Alaska to her local hospital, on two long-distance flights. The crew are on record as having no idea she was close to giving birth. Two days later she was back at work. Months later she was holding up "this precious child", Trig, at the Republican convention like a scene from The Lion King.
I've never believed this story. What we do know is that refusing an abortion with a Down's syndrome child was critical to her gaining altitude with the Tea Party base. Maybe McGinniss's book will force Palin to produce records to prove her maternity. I first asked for them in September 2008. So far, nothing.
Does this mean she really is over, as the somewhat embarrassed Beltway has long insisted? It's possible, but she must know that if she doesn't run her 15 minutes of fame are up. And Palin tends to want every second of them. In my judgment, she could well use the McGinniss book as classic jujitsu: she'll claim she is being attacked by the liberal elites and turn it to her advantage by declaring she's running to defeat them. That's a message the base adores.
As the shine comes off Rick Perry, as Mitt Romney treads water and as Michele Bachmann appears to be fading fast, Palin has an opening. One reason I suspect she'll take it is that she joined the growing attacks on Perry, one of her closest political allies in the past, calling him a purveyor of "crony capitalism". If she were to pole-vault off the new book to run as candidate-as-victim, then Republican politics could be hopelessly scrambled.
Stay tuned. Turbulence ahead.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/finally-sarah-palin-has-to-put-up-or-shut-up/story-e6frg6ux-1226142078735
Finally, Sarah Palin has to put up - or shut up
By Andrew Sullivan
THE next two weeks will determine the future of Sarah Palin. She has promised to make her mind up on whether she will run for the Republican nomination by the end of this month, and this week Joe McGinniss's devastating portrait, The Rogue, will be published.
That's quite a combination - and could lead to either the end of the Palin phenomenon or the beginning of its next and more lethal stage.
The initial reaction of Palin's husband, Todd, to nuggets of the book leaked to the National Enquirer suggests that, whatever happens, there will be fireworks.
Of McGinniss, he said: "This is a man who has been relentlessly stalking my family to the point of moving in right next door to us to harass us and spy on us to satisfy his creepy obsession with my wife. His book is full of disgusting lies, innuendo and smears."
Really? McGinniss wrote the book because he believed the mainstream media didn't get close to the true weirdness, extremism and instability of the former vice-presidential candidate. He knew Alaska well, having written a bestseller, Going to Extremes, about it, and was steeped in political reporting, from The Selling of the President in 1969 to his brutal take-down of Ted Kennedy, The Last Brother. McGinniss is an aggressive reporter who knows how to get people to tell him things and is fearless about publishing what he finds. And he smelt the story the Washington press just didn't want to touch.
By chance, while looking for a place to stay when he was researching the book in Palin's home town of Wasilla, he was offered the rental property next door. Hardly believing his luck, he said yes - and got a blast of pre-publicity, courtesy of the Palins. Sarah accused McGinniss of spying on her and her kids, while Todd built a high wooden fence to obscure any view.
But McGinniss was not there to spy on the Palins, even if his location got under their skin. There's no evidence he ever behaved anything but impeccably. But once the news spread, almost everyone he met in Wasilla offered him a gun for self-defence. He declined.
What McGinnis found was a climate of fear of the Palins in Alaska, especially in Wasilla. The people he met had grown up with or worked for the Palins or knew them closely, and they were prepared to tell the true story: a woman of no executive skills, bored with government, incapable of mothering, connected to the most extreme versions of evangelical Christianity, invariably in one mood swing or another, and vicious and vindictive towards anyone who got in her way.
The gossipy bits of the book - including claims Palin had a fling with a 204cm black basketball star she was covering as a sports journalist, had an affair with her husband's business partner and experimented with cocaine and cannabis - will lead the news stories. But the heart of the story is more revealing. Palin seems consumed with ambition, but strangely uninterested in the business of government or, indeed, any deep knowledge of any difficult subject. She never drops a grudge. She sees no distinction between public office and private gain. She has lived a lonely life as an adult teenager, coming straight from work to skulk in her room, taking trips to department stores rather than going to meetings, her children left to fend for themselves.
It is a pitiable profile of a lost soul, who combines white-knuckle delusions with the bizarre practices and doctrines of the "dominionist" movement, seeking to expand Christian control over secular society. And she believes in witches - she had herself protected from them by a minister in her old church.
And, yes, the story of her last pregnancy is so bizarre it deserves a full chapter. She declared it at seven months, to universal disbelief from everyone, including her own staff. It is rare that a governor's pregnancy is immediately dismissed as impossible on the record in the local paper by her political colleagues. Photos of her in this period are rare (a handful exist and in some she barely looks three months pregnant).
At eight months, she agreed to fly to Texas for a speech. At 4am in a Texas hotel her waters broke, she says. Nonetheless, she gave the speech at noon, full of jokes, writing in her book the unforgettable words: "Big laughs. More contractions."
She refused to go to the nearby children's hospital to deliver a child who was already diagnosed with Down's syndrome, but travelled all the way back to Alaska to her local hospital, on two long-distance flights. The crew are on record as having no idea she was close to giving birth. Two days later she was back at work. Months later she was holding up "this precious child", Trig, at the Republican convention like a scene from The Lion King.
I've never believed this story. What we do know is that refusing an abortion with a Down's syndrome child was critical to her gaining altitude with the Tea Party base. Maybe McGinniss's book will force Palin to produce records to prove her maternity. I first asked for them in September 2008. So far, nothing.
Does this mean she really is over, as the somewhat embarrassed Beltway has long insisted? It's possible, but she must know that if she doesn't run her 15 minutes of fame are up. And Palin tends to want every second of them. In my judgment, she could well use the McGinniss book as classic jujitsu: she'll claim she is being attacked by the liberal elites and turn it to her advantage by declaring she's running to defeat them. That's a message the base adores.
As the shine comes off Rick Perry, as Mitt Romney treads water and as Michele Bachmann appears to be fading fast, Palin has an opening. One reason I suspect she'll take it is that she joined the growing attacks on Perry, one of her closest political allies in the past, calling him a purveyor of "crony capitalism". If she were to pole-vault off the new book to run as candidate-as-victim, then Republican politics could be hopelessly scrambled.
Stay tuned. Turbulence ahead.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/finally-sarah-palin-has-to-put-up-or-shut-up/story-e6frg6ux-1226142078735
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Canada: The Rogue reviewed
PJ: Exposing a hypocrite.
The Star
Book sets out to find Palin — and destroy her
By Mitch Potter
WASHINGTON—Weighing in at 318 pages, The Rogue isn’t merely an act of character assassination — it is one long, hard, steel spike through the political heart of Sarah Palin.
Whatever remote chance remained that the conservative firebrand might one day end up in the White House is poised to unravel Tuesday, when the controversial Joe McGinniss book hits stores.
Put aside the jaw-dropping allegations of cocaine and adultery. Forget about the claim Palin and former NBA player Glen Rice had a one-night tryst back in 1987, when she was a single young reporter and he was a university basketball player. And never mind the insider accounts of the almost Biblical vengeance Sarah and Todd Palin visited upon enemies, real or perceived, during the march from Wasilla, Alaska, to where they reside today, at the astronomically high-paying intersection of Washington and Hollywood.
The Sarah Palin portrayed in The Rogue is nothing short of a born-again hypocrite — and one so self-obsessed, yet so utterly unaware of herself, as to not even know it.
The best-kept secret in Palin’s closet, according to McGinniss, is not the sordid storyline of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll, but the extent to which Palin believes herself chosen by God to be the next president of the United States.
The “evangelical Kool-Aid” of extreme religiosity percolates throughout The Rogue, with Palin confidantes — some named, some not — detailing the out-there end-times theology they scrambled to keep a lid on, lest it go public.
For instance: God created Earth 6,000 years ago and populated it with mankind and dinosaurs. “Mankind had survived, dinosaurs had not. End of story,” writes McInnis.
Except the rest of the story is that these are the end-times, with The Rapture and the return of Jesus imminent. Palin is quoted by fellow Christian Phil Munger as certain all this will transpire in her lifetime. “Maybe you can’t see that but I can, and it guides me every day,” she says.
Yet within the fractious Palin household, another portrait emerges.
“There was no religion,” an insider reveals. “There was nothing about God. There was no Christ. Nobody prayed. No Bibles. No crosses. None of that was ever there. Never.”
Instead, this Palin home is a portrait in dysfunction, where days began with screaming demands for divorce amid children neglected by parents who themselves behaved like emotionally stunted teenagers.
A home from whence a miserable Todd Palin, in the early years at least, escaped regularly for extramarital trysts; and where Sarah is said to have returned the favour, at least once, to get her wayward hubby back in line.
A home from whence the Palin’s eldest son was allegedly shipped off to Iraq to rid the family of potential public-relations powder keg of an OxyContin-chomping vandal prone to violence.
A number of Alaskans share on-the-record close encounters with Planet Palin. But much of the most damning detail is presented under the cloak of anonymity that McGinniss claims to have provided reluctantly. The continuing fear of Palin retribution, the author argues, is alive and well in Wasilla.
One example: The author was already famously at rhetorical war with the Palins, having audaciously rented the house next to theirs in order to write the book. One day, McGinniss called in a local handyman, who arrived with cardboard duct-taped over his truck’s licence plates. “I don’t need any bulls--t from those paranoid f--kers next door,” the handyman explained.
McGinniss claims to have taken not a single photograph or recording of his neighbours during his time in Wasilla. But when Palin first learned the identity of her neighbour, a quick Facebook update alerted her online loyalists and suddenly, the 67-year-old author, his wife, his agent and his publisher were besieged with death threats, sparking national headlines
McGinniss, whose previous writings on Alaska were critically acclaimed, describes how some locals came to his rescue. The “Wasilla Welcome Wagon” included one group who brought him a flag and his choice of six handguns. Another stranger arrived with keys and a map to his house, telling McGinniss he was welcome anyone. “Hell, I’ve even got an AK-47 you might like.”
The rented house was unfurnished and after buying two armchairs, McGinniss struggled to find someone willing to deliver, lest the Palins find out. Finally, Dewey Taylor, a retired schoolteacher, dropped off the furniture. The next night his truck had its driver’s-side window blown out as Taylor slept.
McGinnis describes the Palin practice of vanquishing enemies as a “potentially dangerous character flaw.”
“She has no sense of proportion, no ability to modulate her response. She’s over-the-top in all directions: rah-rah cheerleading for those she supports, spewing vitriolic condemnation of anyone who challenges her.
“If this is how she reactions, as a private citizen, to an unwelcome neighbour next door, what would she do as president if the Iranian government suddenly irked her?”
But McGinniss attributes much of that mindset as a consequence of life under father Chuck Heath, unearthing a story of how her father once whipped up an “ugly, violent mob” in Wasilla to protest the firing of a school principal — his close friend — who was fired for ignoring allegations that another teacher had molested as many as 17 girls in his Grade 3 class.
Said Pat O’Hara, a former school board member caught in the fracas: “Sarah learned from her father; if someone disagrees with you or does something you don’t like, annihilate first, ask questions later.”
McGinniss portrays Todd Palin’s transformation from a hard-drinking, womanizing, cocaine-binging good ol’ boy to an emasculated but vindictive presence today. “Clearly, being reduced to the role of chihuahua carried around in a rich lady’s purse is proving stressful for Todd.”
And he awakens doubts about the real Sarah Palin, gathering anecdotes that suggest she is neither a fisher nor much of a hockey mom, nor even the least bit interested in actual governance, having ruled Alaska partway through a single term with a mostly blank appointment book as she leafed through the pages of People.
The most scathing indictment, however, McGinniss saves for what Palin loves to call the “lamestream” media: Rather than taking her down, the media circus continually catches and resets Palin to a place of otherwise inexplicable prominence.
“Sarah Palin practises politics as lap dance, and we’re the suckers who pay the price,” he concludes.
“Members of our jaded national press corps eagerly stuff hundred-dollar bills in her G-string, even as they wink at one another to show that they don’t take her seriously.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1055449--book-sets-out-to-find-palin-and-destroy-her?bn=1#article
The Star
Book sets out to find Palin — and destroy her
By Mitch Potter
WASHINGTON—Weighing in at 318 pages, The Rogue isn’t merely an act of character assassination — it is one long, hard, steel spike through the political heart of Sarah Palin.
Whatever remote chance remained that the conservative firebrand might one day end up in the White House is poised to unravel Tuesday, when the controversial Joe McGinniss book hits stores.
Put aside the jaw-dropping allegations of cocaine and adultery. Forget about the claim Palin and former NBA player Glen Rice had a one-night tryst back in 1987, when she was a single young reporter and he was a university basketball player. And never mind the insider accounts of the almost Biblical vengeance Sarah and Todd Palin visited upon enemies, real or perceived, during the march from Wasilla, Alaska, to where they reside today, at the astronomically high-paying intersection of Washington and Hollywood.
The Sarah Palin portrayed in The Rogue is nothing short of a born-again hypocrite — and one so self-obsessed, yet so utterly unaware of herself, as to not even know it.
The best-kept secret in Palin’s closet, according to McGinniss, is not the sordid storyline of sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll, but the extent to which Palin believes herself chosen by God to be the next president of the United States.
The “evangelical Kool-Aid” of extreme religiosity percolates throughout The Rogue, with Palin confidantes — some named, some not — detailing the out-there end-times theology they scrambled to keep a lid on, lest it go public.
For instance: God created Earth 6,000 years ago and populated it with mankind and dinosaurs. “Mankind had survived, dinosaurs had not. End of story,” writes McInnis.
Except the rest of the story is that these are the end-times, with The Rapture and the return of Jesus imminent. Palin is quoted by fellow Christian Phil Munger as certain all this will transpire in her lifetime. “Maybe you can’t see that but I can, and it guides me every day,” she says.
Yet within the fractious Palin household, another portrait emerges.
“There was no religion,” an insider reveals. “There was nothing about God. There was no Christ. Nobody prayed. No Bibles. No crosses. None of that was ever there. Never.”
Instead, this Palin home is a portrait in dysfunction, where days began with screaming demands for divorce amid children neglected by parents who themselves behaved like emotionally stunted teenagers.
A home from whence a miserable Todd Palin, in the early years at least, escaped regularly for extramarital trysts; and where Sarah is said to have returned the favour, at least once, to get her wayward hubby back in line.
A home from whence the Palin’s eldest son was allegedly shipped off to Iraq to rid the family of potential public-relations powder keg of an OxyContin-chomping vandal prone to violence.
A number of Alaskans share on-the-record close encounters with Planet Palin. But much of the most damning detail is presented under the cloak of anonymity that McGinniss claims to have provided reluctantly. The continuing fear of Palin retribution, the author argues, is alive and well in Wasilla.
One example: The author was already famously at rhetorical war with the Palins, having audaciously rented the house next to theirs in order to write the book. One day, McGinniss called in a local handyman, who arrived with cardboard duct-taped over his truck’s licence plates. “I don’t need any bulls--t from those paranoid f--kers next door,” the handyman explained.
McGinniss claims to have taken not a single photograph or recording of his neighbours during his time in Wasilla. But when Palin first learned the identity of her neighbour, a quick Facebook update alerted her online loyalists and suddenly, the 67-year-old author, his wife, his agent and his publisher were besieged with death threats, sparking national headlines
McGinniss, whose previous writings on Alaska were critically acclaimed, describes how some locals came to his rescue. The “Wasilla Welcome Wagon” included one group who brought him a flag and his choice of six handguns. Another stranger arrived with keys and a map to his house, telling McGinniss he was welcome anyone. “Hell, I’ve even got an AK-47 you might like.”
The rented house was unfurnished and after buying two armchairs, McGinniss struggled to find someone willing to deliver, lest the Palins find out. Finally, Dewey Taylor, a retired schoolteacher, dropped off the furniture. The next night his truck had its driver’s-side window blown out as Taylor slept.
McGinnis describes the Palin practice of vanquishing enemies as a “potentially dangerous character flaw.”
“She has no sense of proportion, no ability to modulate her response. She’s over-the-top in all directions: rah-rah cheerleading for those she supports, spewing vitriolic condemnation of anyone who challenges her.
“If this is how she reactions, as a private citizen, to an unwelcome neighbour next door, what would she do as president if the Iranian government suddenly irked her?”
But McGinniss attributes much of that mindset as a consequence of life under father Chuck Heath, unearthing a story of how her father once whipped up an “ugly, violent mob” in Wasilla to protest the firing of a school principal — his close friend — who was fired for ignoring allegations that another teacher had molested as many as 17 girls in his Grade 3 class.
Said Pat O’Hara, a former school board member caught in the fracas: “Sarah learned from her father; if someone disagrees with you or does something you don’t like, annihilate first, ask questions later.”
McGinniss portrays Todd Palin’s transformation from a hard-drinking, womanizing, cocaine-binging good ol’ boy to an emasculated but vindictive presence today. “Clearly, being reduced to the role of chihuahua carried around in a rich lady’s purse is proving stressful for Todd.”
And he awakens doubts about the real Sarah Palin, gathering anecdotes that suggest she is neither a fisher nor much of a hockey mom, nor even the least bit interested in actual governance, having ruled Alaska partway through a single term with a mostly blank appointment book as she leafed through the pages of People.
The most scathing indictment, however, McGinniss saves for what Palin loves to call the “lamestream” media: Rather than taking her down, the media circus continually catches and resets Palin to a place of otherwise inexplicable prominence.
“Sarah Palin practises politics as lap dance, and we’re the suckers who pay the price,” he concludes.
“Members of our jaded national press corps eagerly stuff hundred-dollar bills in her G-string, even as they wink at one another to show that they don’t take her seriously.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1055449--book-sets-out-to-find-palin-and-destroy-her?bn=1#article
UK: Palin: "an opportunist and a phoney"
The Age
Titillating northern exposure
By Alex Spillius
Author Joe McGinniss has taken a bit of the shine off Sarah Palin's wholesome image.
WHAT has happened to Sarah Palin? Only three years ago, at her electrifying introduction to the national political stage, she was being lauded as an American Margaret Thatcher destined to save the country's right.
The 2008 election may have been lost, but the Tea Party movement she adopted, and which claimed her as its own, then recaptured the House of Representatives for the Republicans with a thumping majority and changed Washington's agenda. While we all assumed she would then be among the first Republicans to join the battle for the 2012 nomination, Mrs Palin skulked in the background and morphed into a pundit, author and reality TV star.
And now come revelations in an unauthorised biography that will test the commitment of her most ardent followers and probably kill off what was left of her White House prospects.
Author Joe McGinniss claimed that, as a young television sports reporter, and while she was dating Todd, her husband-to-be, Mrs Palin had a one-night stand with Glen Rice, then a rising college basketball player and now a leading NBA pro.
According to reports (The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin isn't out until this week), McGinniss's book confirms an existing rumour that Mrs Palin had a six-month affair with Todd's business partner in 1996.
He also cites one or more witnesses who said they saw Sarah and Todd snorting cocaine off the top of a 55-gallon drum on a snowmobile outing with friends. It is claimed Todd was a regular cocaine user who was ''on the end of the straw plenty'', and that Mrs Palin smoked marijuana with a college professor in Alaska.
The New York Times has dismissed McGinniss, an old and sometimes controversial hand at bestsellers, as ''too busy being nasty to be lucid''. More damagingly, it trashed his reporting as ''caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources''.
It has mattered not. The story has lit up the internet and the allegations do have a certain ring of truth to them. Besides, people will want to believe them, such is the prurient interest in Mrs Palin. Sex appeal has always been part of her grip on the public imagination. She positively oozes it, as I discovered at a black-tie party in Washington a few months ago. Lighting up the room, she displayed the magnetic and, dare I say it, Clintonian laser beam that can stun and seduce all at once.
The idea of a conservative Christian woman with fashionable glasses, a lithe body and a twinkle in her eye who turns out to have (had) a wicked side (and, if McGinniss's sources are to be believed, a brief ''fetish'' for black men) titillates on so many levels that it hardly bears thinking about.
Many of Mrs Palin's supporters, of course, will simply refuse to believe the book's revelations, or forgive them, especially the sexual ones. Liberals, for their part, will point to the hypocrisy of her support for the promotion of teenage sexual abstinence over sex education.
More troubling to her small-town, heartland audience will be the claim of cocaine use. It will cause some of the faithful to conclude that Mrs Palin is nothing but an opportunist and a phoney.
The rest of the world has suspected as much for a while. As we have seen, she rails against federal power but as governor of Alaska lapped up Washington's largesse. A champion of fiscal sanity, the former mayor of Wasilla left the town of 7000 with a $US22 million deficit.
But perhaps the most damaging elements of McGinniss's book are the caustic observations of former staff that Mrs Palin was not a serious politician. Her former security chief says she was obsessed with shopping and read only People magazine as she travelled the country.
Sarah Palin is the Republican Barack Obama. The only difference is that the President confessed to his drug use, and restricts his basketball dalliances to the court.
TELEGRAPH
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/titillating-northern-exposure-20110917-1kf23.html#ixzz1YEiRTEB6
http://www.theage.com.au/world/titillating-northern-exposure-20110917-1kf23.html
Titillating northern exposure
By Alex Spillius
Author Joe McGinniss has taken a bit of the shine off Sarah Palin's wholesome image.
WHAT has happened to Sarah Palin? Only three years ago, at her electrifying introduction to the national political stage, she was being lauded as an American Margaret Thatcher destined to save the country's right.
The 2008 election may have been lost, but the Tea Party movement she adopted, and which claimed her as its own, then recaptured the House of Representatives for the Republicans with a thumping majority and changed Washington's agenda. While we all assumed she would then be among the first Republicans to join the battle for the 2012 nomination, Mrs Palin skulked in the background and morphed into a pundit, author and reality TV star.
And now come revelations in an unauthorised biography that will test the commitment of her most ardent followers and probably kill off what was left of her White House prospects.
Author Joe McGinniss claimed that, as a young television sports reporter, and while she was dating Todd, her husband-to-be, Mrs Palin had a one-night stand with Glen Rice, then a rising college basketball player and now a leading NBA pro.
According to reports (The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin isn't out until this week), McGinniss's book confirms an existing rumour that Mrs Palin had a six-month affair with Todd's business partner in 1996.
He also cites one or more witnesses who said they saw Sarah and Todd snorting cocaine off the top of a 55-gallon drum on a snowmobile outing with friends. It is claimed Todd was a regular cocaine user who was ''on the end of the straw plenty'', and that Mrs Palin smoked marijuana with a college professor in Alaska.
The New York Times has dismissed McGinniss, an old and sometimes controversial hand at bestsellers, as ''too busy being nasty to be lucid''. More damagingly, it trashed his reporting as ''caustic, unsubstantiated gossip about the Palins, often from unnamed sources''.
It has mattered not. The story has lit up the internet and the allegations do have a certain ring of truth to them. Besides, people will want to believe them, such is the prurient interest in Mrs Palin. Sex appeal has always been part of her grip on the public imagination. She positively oozes it, as I discovered at a black-tie party in Washington a few months ago. Lighting up the room, she displayed the magnetic and, dare I say it, Clintonian laser beam that can stun and seduce all at once.
The idea of a conservative Christian woman with fashionable glasses, a lithe body and a twinkle in her eye who turns out to have (had) a wicked side (and, if McGinniss's sources are to be believed, a brief ''fetish'' for black men) titillates on so many levels that it hardly bears thinking about.
Many of Mrs Palin's supporters, of course, will simply refuse to believe the book's revelations, or forgive them, especially the sexual ones. Liberals, for their part, will point to the hypocrisy of her support for the promotion of teenage sexual abstinence over sex education.
More troubling to her small-town, heartland audience will be the claim of cocaine use. It will cause some of the faithful to conclude that Mrs Palin is nothing but an opportunist and a phoney.
The rest of the world has suspected as much for a while. As we have seen, she rails against federal power but as governor of Alaska lapped up Washington's largesse. A champion of fiscal sanity, the former mayor of Wasilla left the town of 7000 with a $US22 million deficit.
But perhaps the most damaging elements of McGinniss's book are the caustic observations of former staff that Mrs Palin was not a serious politician. Her former security chief says she was obsessed with shopping and read only People magazine as she travelled the country.
Sarah Palin is the Republican Barack Obama. The only difference is that the President confessed to his drug use, and restricts his basketball dalliances to the court.
TELEGRAPH
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/world/titillating-northern-exposure-20110917-1kf23.html#ixzz1YEiRTEB6
http://www.theage.com.au/world/titillating-northern-exposure-20110917-1kf23.html
Israel: Palestinians doubt US in peace process
Haaretz
PA Official: U.S. Mideast peace offer convinced Palestinians to seek statehood at UN
Senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath says proposal offered by visiting U.S. envoys only achieved in convincing President Abbas that Washington wasn't serious about brokering peace with Israel.
By DPA
A last-ditch U.S. attempt to sway the Palestinian Authority away from its planned statehood bid at the United Nations and toward resumed negotiations with Israel achieved only in convincing the Palestinians that recognition in the UN was their only possibility, a PA official said on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said that a plan
delivered at the last minute by U.S. envoys David Hale and Dennis Ross did not meet several Palestinian demands and, thus, convinced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the U.S. was not serious in trying to negotiate peace.
"David Hale and Dennis Ross came with a paper that was the last straw that he [Abbas] could take," said Shaath. "It seems that it was designed to be rejected."
One issue the Palestinians had with the American proposal was did not refer to disputed Israeli settlements as illegal, instead attributing their presence to demographic trends since 1967.
Shaath said accepting the U.S. proposal would have legalized the disputed settlements.
The Palestinians have been demanding that Israel should stop all settlement activities in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, before they will agree to resume stalled negotiations.
Shaath said Abbas will apply for membership to the Security Council, which may take few days to bring it up for discussion and then a vote.
However, he said, in case the Security Council stalls in its procedures and delays discussion of the membership application, the Palestinian Authority may then go to the UN General Assembly to ask for a non-member state post. Indications are that a majority of the General Assembly would back that move.
In a speech Friday, Abbas said that he was going only to the Security Council without saying what would his next step should the Palestinian application - as the U.S. has signaled it will do.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/pa-official-u-s-mideast-peace-offer-convinced-palestinians-to-seek-statehood-at-un-1.385011
PA Official: U.S. Mideast peace offer convinced Palestinians to seek statehood at UN
Senior Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath says proposal offered by visiting U.S. envoys only achieved in convincing President Abbas that Washington wasn't serious about brokering peace with Israel.
By DPA
A last-ditch U.S. attempt to sway the Palestinian Authority away from its planned statehood bid at the United Nations and toward resumed negotiations with Israel achieved only in convincing the Palestinians that recognition in the UN was their only possibility, a PA official said on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters in Ramallah, Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said that a plan
delivered at the last minute by U.S. envoys David Hale and Dennis Ross did not meet several Palestinian demands and, thus, convinced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that the U.S. was not serious in trying to negotiate peace.
"David Hale and Dennis Ross came with a paper that was the last straw that he [Abbas] could take," said Shaath. "It seems that it was designed to be rejected."
One issue the Palestinians had with the American proposal was did not refer to disputed Israeli settlements as illegal, instead attributing their presence to demographic trends since 1967.
Shaath said accepting the U.S. proposal would have legalized the disputed settlements.
The Palestinians have been demanding that Israel should stop all settlement activities in the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, before they will agree to resume stalled negotiations.
Shaath said Abbas will apply for membership to the Security Council, which may take few days to bring it up for discussion and then a vote.
However, he said, in case the Security Council stalls in its procedures and delays discussion of the membership application, the Palestinian Authority may then go to the UN General Assembly to ask for a non-member state post. Indications are that a majority of the General Assembly would back that move.
In a speech Friday, Abbas said that he was going only to the Security Council without saying what would his next step should the Palestinian application - as the U.S. has signaled it will do.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/pa-official-u-s-mideast-peace-offer-convinced-palestinians-to-seek-statehood-at-un-1.385011
UK: No laughs for Bachmann
PJ: It is very telling for the new GOP that the majority of republican presidential candidates could be television evangelists. And we were all taught that the US Constitution guaranteed a separation between church and state!
The Guardian
Michele Bachmann gets no laughs from Jay Leno
Michele Bachmann has an awkward chat with Jay Leno, who pushed the Republican over gay marriage and the HPV vaccine
For many celebrities, Jay Leno's Tonight Show is a fairly gentle outlet for publicity. But as Michele Bachmann discovered, Leno can have a sharp edge when he chooses to unsheath it.
If the Republican presidential contender was expecting a few jokes and some good PR, she didn't get it. Instead, the late-night talkshow host asked pointed questions about Bachmann's disputed objections to the HPV vaccine and gay marriage in an awkward encounter that showed Bachmann to be evasive under Leno's probing, while her own attempts at jokes fell flat.
The omens weren't good as Leno announced his line-up of guests, the audience giving big cheers for Jason Statham and Lady Antebellum – but not a single whoop could be heard for Bachmann when her name was mentioned.
After Bachmann came on stage to Walking on Sunshine, Leno dispensed with chit-chat and quickly asked Bachmann about her attacks on Texas governor Rick Perry's support for the HPV vaccine.
"Is that bad? it's a vaccine to prevent to prevent cervical cancer," asked Leno.
"Well I think so," replied Bachmann. "The concern is that there are potentially side effects that can come with something like that. But it gives a false sense of assurance to a young woman when she has that, that if she's sexually active that she doesn't have to worry about sexually transmitted diseases."
Bachmann had denounced Perry's support for mandatory use of the vaccine in the Republican candidates debate on Monday – when she had also made unsubstantiated claims that the vaccine was dangerous.
Pressed by Leno – "I'm not sure it's a sense of assurance. It can prevent cervical cancer," he said – Bachmann again insisted: "It's something that could potentially have dangerous side effects."
Bachmann's claims have been disputed by medical authorities, who say there is no evidence hat the vaccine has serious side-efects.
Leno asked Bachmann about her later claim to have met an unidentified woman following the debate who said her daughter had "mental retardation" as a result of the HPV vaccine. "Do you regret not getting this woman's name and address?"
"I don't know who this person was," Bachmann replied. "I wasn't speaking as a doctor, I wasn't speaking as a scientist, I was just relating what this woman told me."
Leno kept pushing, asking: "So other vaccines you'd be OK with, smallpox and things like that?" But Bachmann ducked the question, saying: "That wasn't even the issue."
Asking about the clinic run by her husband, Leno was even more dismissive: "That whole 'pray the gay away' thing, I don't get that."
"When I heard that I thought it was a mid-life crisis thing, 'prayer raises grey'," was Bachmann's lame attempt at a jokey reply, which drew only an annoyed grunt from Leno.
"You know what I'm saying," he said.
"To me, when I was a kid, they used to try and teach me to write right-handed ... to me that's the same thing if you're gay. I've been married 31 years, first wife, very happy. Two gay guys get married, how does that affect my marriage?"
Bachmann didn't attempt to answer the point, instead replying: "The whole thing is, with clinics, whatever issue anyone has, we don't discriminate, we don't discriminate with people's issues."
But if gay people want to get married, "why is that even an issue?" Leno asked. Bachmann again backed away from an answer: "The family is foundational and marriage between a man and a woman is what the law has been for years," is all she could manage, along with a tight smile.
At one point, Leno told Bachmann: "You seem strident in your views." No, said Bachmann, "I'm convicted." Leno corrected her: "You don't get convicted until after you've been in office."
In his opening monologue, Leno had a gag about Rick Perry's meeting with Donald Trump on Thursday: "That's a good combination: a guy who talks to God and a guy who thinks he's god."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2011/sep/17/michele-bachmann-jay-leno-tonight
The Guardian
Michele Bachmann gets no laughs from Jay Leno
Michele Bachmann has an awkward chat with Jay Leno, who pushed the Republican over gay marriage and the HPV vaccine
For many celebrities, Jay Leno's Tonight Show is a fairly gentle outlet for publicity. But as Michele Bachmann discovered, Leno can have a sharp edge when he chooses to unsheath it.
If the Republican presidential contender was expecting a few jokes and some good PR, she didn't get it. Instead, the late-night talkshow host asked pointed questions about Bachmann's disputed objections to the HPV vaccine and gay marriage in an awkward encounter that showed Bachmann to be evasive under Leno's probing, while her own attempts at jokes fell flat.
The omens weren't good as Leno announced his line-up of guests, the audience giving big cheers for Jason Statham and Lady Antebellum – but not a single whoop could be heard for Bachmann when her name was mentioned.
After Bachmann came on stage to Walking on Sunshine, Leno dispensed with chit-chat and quickly asked Bachmann about her attacks on Texas governor Rick Perry's support for the HPV vaccine.
"Is that bad? it's a vaccine to prevent to prevent cervical cancer," asked Leno.
"Well I think so," replied Bachmann. "The concern is that there are potentially side effects that can come with something like that. But it gives a false sense of assurance to a young woman when she has that, that if she's sexually active that she doesn't have to worry about sexually transmitted diseases."
Bachmann had denounced Perry's support for mandatory use of the vaccine in the Republican candidates debate on Monday – when she had also made unsubstantiated claims that the vaccine was dangerous.
Pressed by Leno – "I'm not sure it's a sense of assurance. It can prevent cervical cancer," he said – Bachmann again insisted: "It's something that could potentially have dangerous side effects."
Bachmann's claims have been disputed by medical authorities, who say there is no evidence hat the vaccine has serious side-efects.
Leno asked Bachmann about her later claim to have met an unidentified woman following the debate who said her daughter had "mental retardation" as a result of the HPV vaccine. "Do you regret not getting this woman's name and address?"
"I don't know who this person was," Bachmann replied. "I wasn't speaking as a doctor, I wasn't speaking as a scientist, I was just relating what this woman told me."
Leno kept pushing, asking: "So other vaccines you'd be OK with, smallpox and things like that?" But Bachmann ducked the question, saying: "That wasn't even the issue."
Asking about the clinic run by her husband, Leno was even more dismissive: "That whole 'pray the gay away' thing, I don't get that."
"When I heard that I thought it was a mid-life crisis thing, 'prayer raises grey'," was Bachmann's lame attempt at a jokey reply, which drew only an annoyed grunt from Leno.
"You know what I'm saying," he said.
"To me, when I was a kid, they used to try and teach me to write right-handed ... to me that's the same thing if you're gay. I've been married 31 years, first wife, very happy. Two gay guys get married, how does that affect my marriage?"
Bachmann didn't attempt to answer the point, instead replying: "The whole thing is, with clinics, whatever issue anyone has, we don't discriminate, we don't discriminate with people's issues."
But if gay people want to get married, "why is that even an issue?" Leno asked. Bachmann again backed away from an answer: "The family is foundational and marriage between a man and a woman is what the law has been for years," is all she could manage, along with a tight smile.
At one point, Leno told Bachmann: "You seem strident in your views." No, said Bachmann, "I'm convicted." Leno corrected her: "You don't get convicted until after you've been in office."
In his opening monologue, Leno had a gag about Rick Perry's meeting with Donald Trump on Thursday: "That's a good combination: a guy who talks to God and a guy who thinks he's god."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2011/sep/17/michele-bachmann-jay-leno-tonight
Thursday, September 15, 2011
UK: Not even Sarah Palin deserves this type of muck racking...in other words, he who is without sin may cast the first stone
PJ: Sarah Palin is a fraud, and perhaps that is why so many people have tried to unmask her. Her Christian beliefs seem to go only so far as to ask her fans to pray for her, her abstinence only soapbox is actually quite rickety, her 'qualifications' are only smoke and mirrors and a pretty facade, she holds herself up as some kind of perfect model of civility while casting stone after stone against her opponents, she attacks the media while doing all that she can to garner their attention...but does that mean that she is fair game for any muck-racking journalist?
The Guardian
Raking up old allegations? Not even Sarah Palin deserves that
We don't want the media constantly recycling lurid stories about what politicians might, or might not, have done in their youth
What with the eurozone tottering and threatening to collapse on the rest of us and a UN habitat buff intervening in the Travellers eviction dispute in Essex, you may not have had time today to see that Sarah Palin is in trouble again.
This time, a biography is alleging that she used drugs and had a long affair with her husband's business partner. Those hockey moms, eh!
The Guardian didn't make much of the story in the dead tree edition of the paper – the printed version we all still cherish – though you can find Chris McGreal's online account here.
Sensibly, the paper's editors preferred to find space for the more serious/less raunchy problems surrounding the presidential ambitions of that other populist now seeking the US presidency Michele Bachmann.
She's had to apologise to Governor Rick Perry, the populist from Texas, for forcing health-threatening vaccines on teenage girls in the state. McGreal's report – it was a busy trailer-park day for him – is here.
I have a problem with stories like the Palin one, which has topical British resonance to which I will return. The allegations are made in The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, written by the veteran crime and politics reporter, Joe McGinnis, who wrote his first such bestseller about Richard Nixon's White House triumph as long ago as 1968.
What they boil down to is that the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee allegedly smoked marijuana with her prof as a student, snorted cocaine off an oil drum while snowmobiling and had an affair with a former business chum of her husband, Todd Palin.
Oh yes, the book also alleges that she liked to sleep naked on school field trips and may – it's denied – have enjoyed a one night stand with Glen Rice, a future black basketball star, in her sister's dorm room at the University of Alaska.
Some of this stuff has surfaced, pre-publication, in the National Enquirer (what the snooty mainstream US media usually calls a downmarket tabloid that people buy at the supermarket checkout, usually run by Fleet Street emigres too), and in leaks to Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip (which makes it OK with card-carrying liberals).
My problem is that the wretched woman didn't do all this last week or even on the campaign bus with Senator John McCain, who might well not have noticed if she did.
It all happened years ago, in her teens and 20s. As David Cameron might have said (actually he did say it in 2005): "We're allowed to have a private life before politics in which we make mistakes and do things we should not."
Quite so. I think Palin is a flaky lightweight who is in way above her head in the governor's mansion – but doing what millions of other American voters of her generation have also done, and doing it long ago, is no reason to throw stones at her now. We should leave that sort of thing to the Iranians.
Stewart Lawrence has a piece on Comment is Free suggesting that she is still a contender, albeit undeclared, and could even run as a third party – ie Tea Party – spoiler in 2012. That would, of course, clinch Barack Obama's re-election. I stand by my personal guarantee to all readers: Sarah Palin is unelectable as president of the US (and a good thing, too).
But we should pause here and look at our own dirty habits, which seem to be spreading to France as the socialists' internal battle for the presidential nomination gets dirtier. Political "love triangles" used to be private in France, but the internet, Twitter and the DSK affair have put an end to that. As always, it's a mixed blessing.
On Monday, a colleague asked if I would write a commentary on the resurfacing of a British coke and sex scandal. Oh really, which one? This one was from ABC News in Australia.
As you may have heard by now, it's the one about the sex industrialist, Natalie Rowe, and the future chancellor, George Osborne. The pair were more than good friends and, when this story first surfaced in 2005, she claimed he took drugs "on a regular basis" – and she alleges it again now. Osborne and his friends have emphatically denied it.
Newspapers like the Guardian, wary of intrusion into private lives and creeping tabloid attitudes, agonise over stories like this one. It's hard to get right every time. Sometimes I think we print stuff we shouldn't – and vice versa. As someone said to me only yesterday: "You lot weren't as hard on Piers Morgan's transgressions as you were on Andy Coulson's." Morgan isn't in big league politics, I replied, but my challenger had a point.
In this instance, the media correspondent James Robinson wrote a report angled on the fact that Rowe, a former escort agency boss, thinks her phone may have been hacked by News of the World staff before they ran a "spoiler" version of the Sunday Mirror story of October 2005 (for which the Mirror had paid her proper money).
It's what the trade calls a "way into the story", and what allows the wider allegations to be aired too. Phone hacking is a serious and topical matter – yesterday's paper reported a 7/7 victim's mother joining the long list of those suing – more so than what Osborne may or may not have done at the age of 22.
There was another "legitimate" way into the story, which ABC TV floated in Oz and other papers deployed in its wake – namely that Coulson, the NoW's then editor, soft-pedalled the story and was owed a favour. Hence Osborne's fateful recommendation to his friend, Cameron, that he appoint him as his street-smart, Essex-born media adviser. Geddit?
This, too, has been emphatically denied and – at the risk of routine accusations of naivety – I tend to believe the denials. On Monday, I declined my invitation to write about it all. We could see that Rowe, now 47 (the chancellor is 41), might have an interest in promoting her version of events again but – as with Palin – what happened years ago before either party entered politics seemed not to be fair game.
I am not aware that either she or Osborne has ever taken a hard line against drugs, something which might justify (at a stretch) charges of hypocrisy which are easily made in public life and easily aired via Twitter and across the internet.
My reaction on Monday was that the Vickers report on reforms of the banking system had just been published and that some slick City PR, keen to keep the Treasury on the back foot, had planted the story to distract and undermine Osborne, who says he wants to implement Vickers, albeit slowly.
A more sophisticated reading might be that ex-NoW staff now in search of work might be peddling what they have in old notebooks and shared memories of past exclusives, printed and not yet printed.
Someone with good contacts in Australia, Digger Murdoch's old patch, could have set it all up, as they are suspected of doing in Oz with the Charles and Camilla "tampon tape" all those years ago. Too hot for Britain? Leak it in Oz.
As I say, I don't know the answer, but it's a mucky business. Partly because this kind of dilemma keeps coming back in our gossipy holier-than-thou age, and the Palin disclosures reinforce the point.
Partly because the Rowe-Osborne saga has rattled away all week to the point that Matthew D'Ancona, the nearest thing the Tory party has to columnar royalty these days (ex-Spectator editor, ex-Fellow of All Souls, Oxford) wrote about it in his London Evening Standard column.
Here it is, wordly and wise – kind even – as usual. Osborne did deal directly with Coulson at the NoW over Rowe's claims and was impressed by his aggressive intelligence, says D'Ancona. The Murdoch stable was already committed to the Cameron-Osborne team in the Tory leadership contest. He recommended Coulson as a bruised "former victim, not as a man repaying a debt".
That sounds plausible, and D'Ancona is also right to suggest this storm in a coke bottle will not last long, unlike the wider hacking scandal, which is unfolding via myriad inquiries. The Levinson inquiry into media practices is collecting witnesses with axes to grind aplenty, while James Murdoch has been recalled by MPs to explain himself further. Like the Iraq inquiry, which burdens Tony Blair, this one will run and run.
But on a day when the Committee on Standards in Public Life (are its own standards slipping, I wonder?) is reporting that public confidence in elected politicians is again falling (pdf), we don't want the media constantly recycling lurid stories about what they might have done/not done or even worn/not worn in their youthful past.
I keep saying that intrusive and unjustified pressures on public life – the bits that may be a good read but aren't in the public interest – is shrinking the talent pool of those willing to stand for office or take on gruesome burdens.
You don't believe me? Well, just look at the failure of European leadership – again – this week, in what may become an existential crisis for its currency.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2011/sep/15/raking-up-allegations-sarah-palin
The Guardian
Raking up old allegations? Not even Sarah Palin deserves that
We don't want the media constantly recycling lurid stories about what politicians might, or might not, have done in their youth
What with the eurozone tottering and threatening to collapse on the rest of us and a UN habitat buff intervening in the Travellers eviction dispute in Essex, you may not have had time today to see that Sarah Palin is in trouble again.
This time, a biography is alleging that she used drugs and had a long affair with her husband's business partner. Those hockey moms, eh!
The Guardian didn't make much of the story in the dead tree edition of the paper – the printed version we all still cherish – though you can find Chris McGreal's online account here.
Sensibly, the paper's editors preferred to find space for the more serious/less raunchy problems surrounding the presidential ambitions of that other populist now seeking the US presidency Michele Bachmann.
She's had to apologise to Governor Rick Perry, the populist from Texas, for forcing health-threatening vaccines on teenage girls in the state. McGreal's report – it was a busy trailer-park day for him – is here.
I have a problem with stories like the Palin one, which has topical British resonance to which I will return. The allegations are made in The Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin, written by the veteran crime and politics reporter, Joe McGinnis, who wrote his first such bestseller about Richard Nixon's White House triumph as long ago as 1968.
What they boil down to is that the former Alaska governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee allegedly smoked marijuana with her prof as a student, snorted cocaine off an oil drum while snowmobiling and had an affair with a former business chum of her husband, Todd Palin.
Oh yes, the book also alleges that she liked to sleep naked on school field trips and may – it's denied – have enjoyed a one night stand with Glen Rice, a future black basketball star, in her sister's dorm room at the University of Alaska.
Some of this stuff has surfaced, pre-publication, in the National Enquirer (what the snooty mainstream US media usually calls a downmarket tabloid that people buy at the supermarket checkout, usually run by Fleet Street emigres too), and in leaks to Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip (which makes it OK with card-carrying liberals).
My problem is that the wretched woman didn't do all this last week or even on the campaign bus with Senator John McCain, who might well not have noticed if she did.
It all happened years ago, in her teens and 20s. As David Cameron might have said (actually he did say it in 2005): "We're allowed to have a private life before politics in which we make mistakes and do things we should not."
Quite so. I think Palin is a flaky lightweight who is in way above her head in the governor's mansion – but doing what millions of other American voters of her generation have also done, and doing it long ago, is no reason to throw stones at her now. We should leave that sort of thing to the Iranians.
Stewart Lawrence has a piece on Comment is Free suggesting that she is still a contender, albeit undeclared, and could even run as a third party – ie Tea Party – spoiler in 2012. That would, of course, clinch Barack Obama's re-election. I stand by my personal guarantee to all readers: Sarah Palin is unelectable as president of the US (and a good thing, too).
But we should pause here and look at our own dirty habits, which seem to be spreading to France as the socialists' internal battle for the presidential nomination gets dirtier. Political "love triangles" used to be private in France, but the internet, Twitter and the DSK affair have put an end to that. As always, it's a mixed blessing.
On Monday, a colleague asked if I would write a commentary on the resurfacing of a British coke and sex scandal. Oh really, which one? This one was from ABC News in Australia.
As you may have heard by now, it's the one about the sex industrialist, Natalie Rowe, and the future chancellor, George Osborne. The pair were more than good friends and, when this story first surfaced in 2005, she claimed he took drugs "on a regular basis" – and she alleges it again now. Osborne and his friends have emphatically denied it.
Newspapers like the Guardian, wary of intrusion into private lives and creeping tabloid attitudes, agonise over stories like this one. It's hard to get right every time. Sometimes I think we print stuff we shouldn't – and vice versa. As someone said to me only yesterday: "You lot weren't as hard on Piers Morgan's transgressions as you were on Andy Coulson's." Morgan isn't in big league politics, I replied, but my challenger had a point.
In this instance, the media correspondent James Robinson wrote a report angled on the fact that Rowe, a former escort agency boss, thinks her phone may have been hacked by News of the World staff before they ran a "spoiler" version of the Sunday Mirror story of October 2005 (for which the Mirror had paid her proper money).
It's what the trade calls a "way into the story", and what allows the wider allegations to be aired too. Phone hacking is a serious and topical matter – yesterday's paper reported a 7/7 victim's mother joining the long list of those suing – more so than what Osborne may or may not have done at the age of 22.
There was another "legitimate" way into the story, which ABC TV floated in Oz and other papers deployed in its wake – namely that Coulson, the NoW's then editor, soft-pedalled the story and was owed a favour. Hence Osborne's fateful recommendation to his friend, Cameron, that he appoint him as his street-smart, Essex-born media adviser. Geddit?
This, too, has been emphatically denied and – at the risk of routine accusations of naivety – I tend to believe the denials. On Monday, I declined my invitation to write about it all. We could see that Rowe, now 47 (the chancellor is 41), might have an interest in promoting her version of events again but – as with Palin – what happened years ago before either party entered politics seemed not to be fair game.
I am not aware that either she or Osborne has ever taken a hard line against drugs, something which might justify (at a stretch) charges of hypocrisy which are easily made in public life and easily aired via Twitter and across the internet.
My reaction on Monday was that the Vickers report on reforms of the banking system had just been published and that some slick City PR, keen to keep the Treasury on the back foot, had planted the story to distract and undermine Osborne, who says he wants to implement Vickers, albeit slowly.
A more sophisticated reading might be that ex-NoW staff now in search of work might be peddling what they have in old notebooks and shared memories of past exclusives, printed and not yet printed.
Someone with good contacts in Australia, Digger Murdoch's old patch, could have set it all up, as they are suspected of doing in Oz with the Charles and Camilla "tampon tape" all those years ago. Too hot for Britain? Leak it in Oz.
As I say, I don't know the answer, but it's a mucky business. Partly because this kind of dilemma keeps coming back in our gossipy holier-than-thou age, and the Palin disclosures reinforce the point.
Partly because the Rowe-Osborne saga has rattled away all week to the point that Matthew D'Ancona, the nearest thing the Tory party has to columnar royalty these days (ex-Spectator editor, ex-Fellow of All Souls, Oxford) wrote about it in his London Evening Standard column.
Here it is, wordly and wise – kind even – as usual. Osborne did deal directly with Coulson at the NoW over Rowe's claims and was impressed by his aggressive intelligence, says D'Ancona. The Murdoch stable was already committed to the Cameron-Osborne team in the Tory leadership contest. He recommended Coulson as a bruised "former victim, not as a man repaying a debt".
That sounds plausible, and D'Ancona is also right to suggest this storm in a coke bottle will not last long, unlike the wider hacking scandal, which is unfolding via myriad inquiries. The Levinson inquiry into media practices is collecting witnesses with axes to grind aplenty, while James Murdoch has been recalled by MPs to explain himself further. Like the Iraq inquiry, which burdens Tony Blair, this one will run and run.
But on a day when the Committee on Standards in Public Life (are its own standards slipping, I wonder?) is reporting that public confidence in elected politicians is again falling (pdf), we don't want the media constantly recycling lurid stories about what they might have done/not done or even worn/not worn in their youthful past.
I keep saying that intrusive and unjustified pressures on public life – the bits that may be a good read but aren't in the public interest – is shrinking the talent pool of those willing to stand for office or take on gruesome burdens.
You don't believe me? Well, just look at the failure of European leadership – again – this week, in what may become an existential crisis for its currency.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2011/sep/15/raking-up-allegations-sarah-palin
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
UK: Pouring cold water on Palin's presidential aspirations
The Guardian
Republicans start to pour cold water over Sarah Palin White House run
Growing list of conservative activists and Tea Party figures dismiss idea of former Alaska governor running for nomination
By Paul Harris
For months former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has played a "will she, won't she" game over a potential run for the Republican presidential nomination and the right to battle President Barack Obama for the White House.
But, in a strong sign that a run is increasingly unlikely, a growing chorus of Republican figures have now dismissed the idea or openly spoken out against it.
The development reveals a chasm between Palin and many senior figures in the party leadership. But, more worryingly for her supporters, conservative activists and Tea Party figures have also started to turn against Palin running for the nomination.
Criticisms have become much more acute since Palin recently gave heavily hyped speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire, but failed to declare if she was running or not. "There is a difference between talking about running and running. She did not announce, and that sends a strong signal that she is not running," said Scott Reed, a top Republican political consultant and former campaign manager for Bob Dole in his 1996 White House bid.
Reed said that Palin seemed content to give passionate speeches to her fan base but had failed to come up with any concrete policies or set up a viable ground organisation for a future campaign.
"She has not fleshed out her policy positions. She has not set people up in the early states. That suggests she is not serious," Reed said.
That chimes with a growing list of senior Republican party figures who have poured cold water on the idea of a Palin run. South Carolina senator Jim DeMint, one of the most powerful figures in the party and a Tea Party stalwart, has openly dismissed the idea of Palin becoming a late entrant to an already hotly contested race. "It doesn't appear that she is going to run," he told CBS News.
Other party operatives have been even more critical. Karl Rove, the Republicans' campaign guru during the Bush years, said Palin might be too "thin-skinned" to survive a campaign. Other popular right wing media figures have gone much further. Firebrand author Ann Coulter even called her "the Obama of the Tea Party" in a reference to the fanaticism of her supporters. "We used to all love Sarah Palin … for her enemies. I'm starting to dislike her because of her fans," Coulter said on Fox News.
Similar sentiments have been voiced by right-wing talk host Laura Ingraham and highly influential conservative Republican blogger Erick Erickson. Erickson was particularly brutal in his attack on Palin's supporters.
"I decided Sarah Palin was not going to run and I moved on … unfortunately as I found out, and as others are starting to find out, moving on from Sarah Palin is like leaving Scientology," he said, before complaining about the numerous online attacks he had received from Palin supporters.
It is a remarkable turnaround for Palin. Ever since John McCain tapped her as his running mate in the 2008 election she has been an electrifying figure for American conservatives. She has long been a darling of Tea Party activists who often assumed she would make a bid for the nomination. But not any longer.
Ryan Rhodes, chairman of the Iowa Tea Party, believes the current roster of Republican candidates is going to narrow, not expand.
"It is going to be a smaller field," he said. "I am more keen on highlighting the views of the Tea Party than worrying whether or not Sarah Palin should or should not run."
Palin herself has – typically – kept mum on the issue. Eschewing traditional methods of communicating with the media she has largely left it up to a handful of surrogates or her own Facebook or Twitter messages to communicate her aims. Those have been confusing at times, but she has previously indicated that she will make a final decision by the end of September.
But some Iowa Republicans think it is already too late.
"I don't think she will run," said Professor Tim Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa and advisor to college Republican groups.
In many ways Palin is in a bind. She still enjoys influence over Republican politics, but inevitably much of that influence stems from the idea that she might run. As soon as it becomes clear that she will not, then that influence starts to fade. Therefore she has a vested interest in keeping the debate going.
But Hagle said that Palin could still exert herself on the coming campaign, even if she does not run, as all candidates would be desperate for her endorsement.
"She is in a good position right now without running. She is a newsmaker and she has influence. If she endorses someone then that could make a real difference to a campaign," he said.
However, despite the growing anti-Palin tide there remain some prominent pro-Palin voices, especially among her armies of faithful fans. One of the most vocal is Peter Singleton, a conservative activist who has decamped to Iowa to head up the grassroots Organize4Palin group there.
Singleton said that he had taken heart from her Iowa speech.
"She has a sophisticated political philosophy that really appeals to people. She did not say she was running, but she did talk about why she would run," Singleton said.
Singleton, a California lawyer, has spent months on his own initiative travelling all over Iowa meeting with Republican figures and getting them to support Palin. Based in a hotel in Des Moines, it is a quest that has earned him profiles in national publications like the Wall Street Journal.
But even Singleton, who has no official link to Palin at all, despite being her most high profile Iowa backer, admits he has no actual clue if she will fulfil his dreams of a run.
"I don't speak for her and have no direct knowledge of any decision," Singleton said and added: "I still see Iowa as a wide open race. I would love to see her back here."
But at the moment there is no public sign that Palin herself has any plans to return soon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/14/sarah-palin-republicans-white-house
Republicans start to pour cold water over Sarah Palin White House run
Growing list of conservative activists and Tea Party figures dismiss idea of former Alaska governor running for nomination
By Paul Harris
For months former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has played a "will she, won't she" game over a potential run for the Republican presidential nomination and the right to battle President Barack Obama for the White House.
But, in a strong sign that a run is increasingly unlikely, a growing chorus of Republican figures have now dismissed the idea or openly spoken out against it.
The development reveals a chasm between Palin and many senior figures in the party leadership. But, more worryingly for her supporters, conservative activists and Tea Party figures have also started to turn against Palin running for the nomination.
Criticisms have become much more acute since Palin recently gave heavily hyped speeches in Iowa and New Hampshire, but failed to declare if she was running or not. "There is a difference between talking about running and running. She did not announce, and that sends a strong signal that she is not running," said Scott Reed, a top Republican political consultant and former campaign manager for Bob Dole in his 1996 White House bid.
Reed said that Palin seemed content to give passionate speeches to her fan base but had failed to come up with any concrete policies or set up a viable ground organisation for a future campaign.
"She has not fleshed out her policy positions. She has not set people up in the early states. That suggests she is not serious," Reed said.
That chimes with a growing list of senior Republican party figures who have poured cold water on the idea of a Palin run. South Carolina senator Jim DeMint, one of the most powerful figures in the party and a Tea Party stalwart, has openly dismissed the idea of Palin becoming a late entrant to an already hotly contested race. "It doesn't appear that she is going to run," he told CBS News.
Other party operatives have been even more critical. Karl Rove, the Republicans' campaign guru during the Bush years, said Palin might be too "thin-skinned" to survive a campaign. Other popular right wing media figures have gone much further. Firebrand author Ann Coulter even called her "the Obama of the Tea Party" in a reference to the fanaticism of her supporters. "We used to all love Sarah Palin … for her enemies. I'm starting to dislike her because of her fans," Coulter said on Fox News.
Similar sentiments have been voiced by right-wing talk host Laura Ingraham and highly influential conservative Republican blogger Erick Erickson. Erickson was particularly brutal in his attack on Palin's supporters.
"I decided Sarah Palin was not going to run and I moved on … unfortunately as I found out, and as others are starting to find out, moving on from Sarah Palin is like leaving Scientology," he said, before complaining about the numerous online attacks he had received from Palin supporters.
It is a remarkable turnaround for Palin. Ever since John McCain tapped her as his running mate in the 2008 election she has been an electrifying figure for American conservatives. She has long been a darling of Tea Party activists who often assumed she would make a bid for the nomination. But not any longer.
Ryan Rhodes, chairman of the Iowa Tea Party, believes the current roster of Republican candidates is going to narrow, not expand.
"It is going to be a smaller field," he said. "I am more keen on highlighting the views of the Tea Party than worrying whether or not Sarah Palin should or should not run."
Palin herself has – typically – kept mum on the issue. Eschewing traditional methods of communicating with the media she has largely left it up to a handful of surrogates or her own Facebook or Twitter messages to communicate her aims. Those have been confusing at times, but she has previously indicated that she will make a final decision by the end of September.
But some Iowa Republicans think it is already too late.
"I don't think she will run," said Professor Tim Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa and advisor to college Republican groups.
In many ways Palin is in a bind. She still enjoys influence over Republican politics, but inevitably much of that influence stems from the idea that she might run. As soon as it becomes clear that she will not, then that influence starts to fade. Therefore she has a vested interest in keeping the debate going.
But Hagle said that Palin could still exert herself on the coming campaign, even if she does not run, as all candidates would be desperate for her endorsement.
"She is in a good position right now without running. She is a newsmaker and she has influence. If she endorses someone then that could make a real difference to a campaign," he said.
However, despite the growing anti-Palin tide there remain some prominent pro-Palin voices, especially among her armies of faithful fans. One of the most vocal is Peter Singleton, a conservative activist who has decamped to Iowa to head up the grassroots Organize4Palin group there.
Singleton said that he had taken heart from her Iowa speech.
"She has a sophisticated political philosophy that really appeals to people. She did not say she was running, but she did talk about why she would run," Singleton said.
Singleton, a California lawyer, has spent months on his own initiative travelling all over Iowa meeting with Republican figures and getting them to support Palin. Based in a hotel in Des Moines, it is a quest that has earned him profiles in national publications like the Wall Street Journal.
But even Singleton, who has no official link to Palin at all, despite being her most high profile Iowa backer, admits he has no actual clue if she will fulfil his dreams of a run.
"I don't speak for her and have no direct knowledge of any decision," Singleton said and added: "I still see Iowa as a wide open race. I would love to see her back here."
But at the moment there is no public sign that Palin herself has any plans to return soon.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/14/sarah-palin-republicans-white-house
75% of Europeans polled approve of President Obama
PJ: The whole purpose of this site is to draw attention to what others think about US politics, policy and politicians. Those of us on the outside appreciate and respect President Obama obviously more than the citizens of the US.
Politico
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63468.html
Politico
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0911/63468.html
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Sorry...but to compliment the "Sarah Palin--You Betcha stories", I just had to add this gem....
Comedy Central's Indecision
Sarah Palin Attacks Entire GOP Field, Wants You to Remember That She Still Exists
These are rough days for Americans, I'll tell you. Nearly one in ten citizens are unemployed, and almost one in six are living in poverty. Paychecks are shrinking, so there's less money to pay for our massive personal debts. And on top of all that, retiring CEOs of global conglomerates are constantly hassling us to take over their billion-dollar jobs when we've already promised our beautiful wives that we're going to spend a year living in a cliff top castle on the Italian Riviera. Life is hard!
But you know what? None of us have it quite so bad as Sarah Palin. She's stuck in the impossible position of having to choose between a) jumping into a presidential primary race that she really has no chance of winning and thereby risking some degree of public embarrassment and a possible loss of speaking engagement dollars, and b) letting other people get some attention. Tough call! Very very tough!
So, that's why she's been forced — forced! — into attacking every one of the Republican primary contenders, especially that one guy who everybody keeps talking about instead of Sarah Palin…
"They haven't tackled debt and deficit spending to the degree that they should, so they don't have a record to stand on," Palin said of the GOP candidates, all of whom serve or have served in public office, save businessman Herman Cain (R).
Palin even went as far as to lend her voice to the charge leveled by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) during the debate against Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R): That he allowed a law to go though requiring HPV vaccinations for adolescent girls because of a $5,000 campaign donation and his relationship with his former chief of staff, who went on to lobby for a pharmaceutical company.
"I knew there was something to it," Palin said of learning while she was Alaska's governor that her Texas counterpart had given the go-ahead to the vaccine. "Now we're finding that now, yea, something was up with that issue. It was an illustration or bit of evidence of some crony capitalism."
Isn't it fantastic how providence has saw to it that now — several years after the fact — Sarah Palin has just come by the information she was wondering about back then?
There are no coincidences, people. These things are meant to happen.
http://www.indecisionforever.com/2011/09/13/sarah-palin-attacks-entire-gop-field-wants-you-to-remember-that-she-still-exists/
Sarah Palin Attacks Entire GOP Field, Wants You to Remember That She Still Exists
These are rough days for Americans, I'll tell you. Nearly one in ten citizens are unemployed, and almost one in six are living in poverty. Paychecks are shrinking, so there's less money to pay for our massive personal debts. And on top of all that, retiring CEOs of global conglomerates are constantly hassling us to take over their billion-dollar jobs when we've already promised our beautiful wives that we're going to spend a year living in a cliff top castle on the Italian Riviera. Life is hard!
But you know what? None of us have it quite so bad as Sarah Palin. She's stuck in the impossible position of having to choose between a) jumping into a presidential primary race that she really has no chance of winning and thereby risking some degree of public embarrassment and a possible loss of speaking engagement dollars, and b) letting other people get some attention. Tough call! Very very tough!
So, that's why she's been forced — forced! — into attacking every one of the Republican primary contenders, especially that one guy who everybody keeps talking about instead of Sarah Palin…
"They haven't tackled debt and deficit spending to the degree that they should, so they don't have a record to stand on," Palin said of the GOP candidates, all of whom serve or have served in public office, save businessman Herman Cain (R).
Palin even went as far as to lend her voice to the charge leveled by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) during the debate against Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R): That he allowed a law to go though requiring HPV vaccinations for adolescent girls because of a $5,000 campaign donation and his relationship with his former chief of staff, who went on to lobby for a pharmaceutical company.
"I knew there was something to it," Palin said of learning while she was Alaska's governor that her Texas counterpart had given the go-ahead to the vaccine. "Now we're finding that now, yea, something was up with that issue. It was an illustration or bit of evidence of some crony capitalism."
Isn't it fantastic how providence has saw to it that now — several years after the fact — Sarah Palin has just come by the information she was wondering about back then?
There are no coincidences, people. These things are meant to happen.
http://www.indecisionforever.com/2011/09/13/sarah-palin-attacks-entire-gop-field-wants-you-to-remember-that-she-still-exists/
Canada: Sarah Palin--You Betcha
National Post
Nick Broomfield goes rogue for his new doc on Sarah Palin
By Mark Medley
I’m not sure that I believe him, to be honest with you, but Nick Broomfield says he didn’t set out to produce a hit piece on Sarah Palin. This seems laughable after watching Sarah Palin: You Betcha!, an exploration and evisceration of the former Alaskan governor and one-time Republican vice-presidential nominee. In his new documentary, the British director portrays Palin as vengeful, ignorant, petty and dishonest — and those might be her better qualities.
“I’ve made a lot of documentaries,” says Broomfield, whose films include Biggie and Tupac, Kurt & Courtney and Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam. “I think each one is really a diary of the experience of making that particular film. And I don’t go in with a big preconception. I’ve learned that quite often people you might not initially think you’re going to like, you like. And I think that’s one of the interesting things about making films: you never really know what’s going to turn up. So when I got to Wasilla [where Palin was raised, once served as mayor, and now lives], I pretty much had an open mind about who she was, what the community is like. I didn’t go in trying to prove any particular thesis or idea.”
Instead, he wanted to answer a question that had been bugging him since she was unveiled as John McCain’s surprise running mate in the summer of 2008. “When she burst onto that stage with John McCain, and she had all those kids around her, and she gave that rather amazing speech that electrified the world, everyone was wondering who the f–k is this person? Why haven’t I heard about her before?”
Although she’s transformed herself into one of America’s most recognizable politicians in subsequent years, Broomfield “felt that I still didn’t really understand enough about how she’d been brought up, about what her real, fundamental beliefs were.”
So to Wasilla he went. Broomfield spent almost three months in the small, south-central Alaskan town, but despite his best efforts — he befriended Palin’s parents, who seem like decent folks — none of her close friends or acquaintances would grant his interview requests. Instead, Broomfield had to settle for former friends and co-workers, all of whom have an axe to grind, making the film seem as partisan as a Tea Party rally — the political movement she helped foster.
“I think one of the reasons for doing the film is she’s so indicative of the direction in which American politics has shifted,” he says. “She’s really a populist politician. And I think her driving force is this belief that she’s kind of supposed to be doing what she’s doing. She’s been chosen to do this stuff.”
In Broomfield’s two brief encounters with Palin (he approached her at book signings while she was on tour promoting her memoir Going Rogue) she comes across as charming, sweet-talking Broomfield and promising him an interview which, of course, never happens. Broomfield thinks she’s been burned by the media too many times — he includes clips of several of her media gaffes, such as the infamous Katie Couric interview. These days, Palin sticks to Facebook, Twitter and the occasional interview with Fox News. “I’ve often wondered: does she really understand half of what she’s saying? Sometimes, literally, she goes into her Palin spaghetti talk, where sentences don’t seem to even make sense. And you kind of wonder who she really is.”
The film might not have seen the light of day if not for Kickstarter; to help raise money in order to distribute the film, Broomfield turned to the website, which allows users to fund projects they deem worthy. He admits to having “great reservations” about this.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, supposed we don’t get any money. We’re going to look like damned idiots — do a belly flop into the mud.’ ” He buries his hands in his face in mock horror. “And I did have a few mornings where I’d wake up and it would have increased by about $1.”
They raised $31, 120 in the end, proving that just as many hate people Sarah Palin as love her.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/13/nick-broomfield-goes-rogue-for-his-new-doc-on-sarah-palin/
Nick Broomfield goes rogue for his new doc on Sarah Palin
By Mark Medley
I’m not sure that I believe him, to be honest with you, but Nick Broomfield says he didn’t set out to produce a hit piece on Sarah Palin. This seems laughable after watching Sarah Palin: You Betcha!, an exploration and evisceration of the former Alaskan governor and one-time Republican vice-presidential nominee. In his new documentary, the British director portrays Palin as vengeful, ignorant, petty and dishonest — and those might be her better qualities.
“I’ve made a lot of documentaries,” says Broomfield, whose films include Biggie and Tupac, Kurt & Courtney and Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam. “I think each one is really a diary of the experience of making that particular film. And I don’t go in with a big preconception. I’ve learned that quite often people you might not initially think you’re going to like, you like. And I think that’s one of the interesting things about making films: you never really know what’s going to turn up. So when I got to Wasilla [where Palin was raised, once served as mayor, and now lives], I pretty much had an open mind about who she was, what the community is like. I didn’t go in trying to prove any particular thesis or idea.”
Instead, he wanted to answer a question that had been bugging him since she was unveiled as John McCain’s surprise running mate in the summer of 2008. “When she burst onto that stage with John McCain, and she had all those kids around her, and she gave that rather amazing speech that electrified the world, everyone was wondering who the f–k is this person? Why haven’t I heard about her before?”
Although she’s transformed herself into one of America’s most recognizable politicians in subsequent years, Broomfield “felt that I still didn’t really understand enough about how she’d been brought up, about what her real, fundamental beliefs were.”
So to Wasilla he went. Broomfield spent almost three months in the small, south-central Alaskan town, but despite his best efforts — he befriended Palin’s parents, who seem like decent folks — none of her close friends or acquaintances would grant his interview requests. Instead, Broomfield had to settle for former friends and co-workers, all of whom have an axe to grind, making the film seem as partisan as a Tea Party rally — the political movement she helped foster.
“I think one of the reasons for doing the film is she’s so indicative of the direction in which American politics has shifted,” he says. “She’s really a populist politician. And I think her driving force is this belief that she’s kind of supposed to be doing what she’s doing. She’s been chosen to do this stuff.”
In Broomfield’s two brief encounters with Palin (he approached her at book signings while she was on tour promoting her memoir Going Rogue) she comes across as charming, sweet-talking Broomfield and promising him an interview which, of course, never happens. Broomfield thinks she’s been burned by the media too many times — he includes clips of several of her media gaffes, such as the infamous Katie Couric interview. These days, Palin sticks to Facebook, Twitter and the occasional interview with Fox News. “I’ve often wondered: does she really understand half of what she’s saying? Sometimes, literally, she goes into her Palin spaghetti talk, where sentences don’t seem to even make sense. And you kind of wonder who she really is.”
The film might not have seen the light of day if not for Kickstarter; to help raise money in order to distribute the film, Broomfield turned to the website, which allows users to fund projects they deem worthy. He admits to having “great reservations” about this.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, supposed we don’t get any money. We’re going to look like damned idiots — do a belly flop into the mud.’ ” He buries his hands in his face in mock horror. “And I did have a few mornings where I’d wake up and it would have increased by about $1.”
They raised $31, 120 in the end, proving that just as many hate people Sarah Palin as love her.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2011/09/13/nick-broomfield-goes-rogue-for-his-new-doc-on-sarah-palin/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)