Teh Google
| Tue Sep. 2, 2008 9:13 AM PDT
TEH GOOGLE....Peter Wallsten of the LA Times talks to a GOP strategist about how deeply the McCain campaign vetted Sarah Palin before announcing her to the world last Friday:
According to this Republican, who would discuss internal campaign strategizing only on condition of anonymity, the McCain team used little more than a Google Internet search as part of a rushed effort to review Palin's potential pitfalls. Just over a week ago, Palin was not on McCain's short list of potential running mates, the Republican said.
Noted without comment, because I'm just commented out. This stuff isn't even coming from the gamma quadrant anymore. It's from another galaxy entirely. At this point, I don't think I'd trust McCain to help me shop for a used car, let alone run the country.
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Comments
Submitted by firefall (not verified) on Tue Sep. 2, 2008 9:28 AM PDT.
tsk, Kevin! Shopping for a new car is important ... being President hardly matters at all by comparison.
Submitted by Matthew (not verified) on Tue Sep. 2, 2008 9:38 AM PDT.
Oh now I get it liberals, suddenly throwing back a shot of Jack and yelling "Fuck it, the woman!" isn't thorough vetting. What was he supposed to do, look into her background or something? I thought you were all against peeping into someone's private records.
Jokes aside, this anonymous Republican's claim that the McCain campaign did a google search was, up until last Friday, demonstrably false.
You cannot confirm it now, because google searches will turn up stories from over the weekend (and I don't know how to use the program that stores old webpages), but the breakdown of the Palin nomination began when bloggers and reporters looked into her background, including...doing a google search. Thats how the national press (and I include bloggers in that category, because they are increasingly the only people I trust to bring me the honest truth) stumbled upon Troopergate.
They may have done a google image search, but something tells me thats too many mouse clicks on the interwebs for the McCain brain trust. Even then, images of Monegan, the guy Palin fired, would have come up. A Google blog search would have yielded Alaskan blogs following the story.
The only google search I can seriously conceive of the McCain campaign doing where Sarah Palin and her colorful history would not come up would be a google scholar search. Cause people are accusing Sarah Palin of a lot of things right now, but being a scholar certainly isn't one of them.
Well it looks like there was a *very slight* increase on google searches for "Palin" starting on the 26th, but that's probably due to increased scrutiny on all of McCain's possible picks. The spike on the 29th is what an actual google 'vetting' looks like.
Submitted by Bruce A. (not verified) on Tue Sep. 2, 2008 11:31 AM PDT.
Hey, even a real vetting might miss stuff.
I recently had a background check done for a new job. The background check came back clean.
WTF? I'm 55 years old; what, have I wasted my life? I must have done something disreputable in all those years. Just because I don't remember anything disreputable doesn't mean nothing ever happened; the black marks you can't remember are the best kind of black marks.
Submitted by fester (not verified) on Tue Sep. 2, 2008 11:35 AM PDT.
Wasn't even a good Google Search as a lot of the juicy public corruption stuff has been on TPM-Muckraker for several weeks now....
Petty complaint. She is a public figure who no doubt has been scrutinized by Alaskans.
I doubt we'll find out that she has all those skeletons in her closet like JFK, who turned out to be an unhealthy libertine with Mafia connections who had innumerable rather mad 007 plots to kill Castro and nearly got us into a nuclear war to prove his immature macho before coming to his senses and trading missiles in Turkey for missiles in Cuber, while meantime maintaining the macho image publicly of facing down the Soviets.
This link: http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9535_palin_alaskan_...
has clarification from AIP members implying that Sarah Palin was not a member after all (but her husband was.)
However, not everyone is convinced. Look at this comment from the Mother Jones thread:
has clarification from AIP members implying that Sarah Palin was not a member after all (but her husband was.)
However, not everyone is convinced. Look at this comment from the Mother Jones thread:
<quoted:
Baloney. Her husband's officially on the rolls for a decade, and before the attention is directed her way you've got multiple AIP people on record (and at least one on video) saying she attended meetings and was a member until she ran for office because "you gotta do what you gotta do"; you've got a past AIP bigwig bragging that he put her in the governor's seat; you've got AIP people saying that one of their tactics is to "infiltrate" the major parties.
And that's all wrong, because she wasn't officially on the rolls, and now that the flashlight is focused on her, you've got an AIP guy saying, uh, no, I didn't really mean that?
Baloney.
Posted by: j on 09/02/08 at 4:43 PM
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I think you liberals should be a little less smug about this. The end of this story is still up in the air. She could rock the house and the coutnry tomorrow. You and your liberal friends in the media may be setting yourself up for the biggest backlash in American political history. And, if you succeed in kiling off Palin, you then may be faced with Leiberman, so that McCain gets the benefit of both. This should be facinating to watch.
Yeah, Brian, and what does all of this say about McCain himself ? He's such a piss-poor candidate that he needs a gimmicky VP pick to even get any attention. You wingers are grasping at straws now, especially if you think this unqualified religious zealot is going to "rock the coutnry".
I don't know how much the Palin issues tells us about the quality of McCain as a candidate. Or even what you mean by quality as a candidate. It does tell us he is bold and willing to take a risk. You combine that with his known character and you decide if that would make a good president. I won't comment on your "unqualified religious Zealot" comment because it is not the kind of fair or reasonable statement that warrants a response.
