DISQUS

genegrant · 1 year ago

Hmmmmm. This feels somewhat late on the draw, considering that a number of the points in her letter have been knocked down (or confirmed, with differing details) for a few days by factcheck.org (and other org's like it), the Time cover story, the AP profile (sorry Arthur!) in the NY Times a few days ago reporting from Alaska, etc. etc. It's fascinating that she feels no journalists have questioned anything else in her original post.

It may be, in fact, that they are not referring to her directly in their pieces, but the reporting results...depending on the issue...have been vastly different.

That said, her personal opinion on what is/was appropriate on Palin's spending decisions etc. in Wasilla seems perfectly fine to me since she lives there and has to live with the results.

I guess my biggest issue on her letter is the oil and gas dust-up. Like all political battles, boiling them down to white hat - black hat bullet points misses the nuance. An opposite example is the story in the Wall Street Journal, "How Palin Beat Alaska's Establishment." It's an extraordinary tale, full of twists and turns vs. the one paragraph on it from Ms. Kilkenny, which leaves a rather different impression.

http://online.wsj.com/article/potomac_watch.html

derekbill · 1 year ago

She's got a lot more charisma, but Palin is as qualified to be President as Martin Chavez is.

Think about that for a while.

Meanwhile, the Evangelicals are treating her like she's Our New Lady of Guadalupe.

thomasjames · 1 year ago

And both Palin and Chavez are more qualified than Obama.

Think about that for awhile.

marjorie · 1 year ago

Comparing Palin to Obama in terms of qualifications is a bit over the top.

They're both relative newcomers when compared to their running mates, with different kinds of qualifications, but here's the distinction in my mind:

The Democratic party spent over a year aggressively debating and voting on who would be their candidate for office. Obama's qualifications were picked over completely, he had to defend them over and over again while up against people who had been in politics a lot longer than himself. This gave all of the United States ample opportunity to mull over this aspect of his candidacy, to hear from him and his supporters for months on end as to why he himself is fully qualified. And ultimately, he was found to be qualified by a huge number of people at the ballot box.

Palin was selected by a very small handful of people to be vice president to a president who, if he wins, will be approaching 80 years of age. Most people have no clue who she is. Frankly, I don't think its good enough that the response to the question of qualifications is that she is "more or as qualified as Obama." What a free pass that is. She should have to just as rigorously answer that question, as Obama has had to do. And we only have about 8 weeks to hear it...so let's hope the Republicans stop hiding her from the press.

tomlaugh · 1 year ago

While not a smoking gun to prove Palin unworthy of holding the VP's office, this e-mail does eat into much of the myth of Palin having a decent resume to hold the office.

I followed Ms. Tessier suggestion and read the update on the San Francisco Chronicle's web site, SFGate.com, the address is: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/.... She changed the story to be that the librarian was fired "after" rather than "because" she refused to ban books and that she didn't know any titles were named, that she shouldn't have said Palin "hated" her, that she was wrong, Palin never was in the PTA and that she should have capitalized "native" when she spoke of Native Americans.

I also checked w/ factcheck.org about the letter as suggested in a comment. While it had rejected the list of books that Palin is credited w/ wanting to ban, it did validate Kilkenny's revised statement that the librarian was fired after she refused to ban books. Now why the librarian was fired, factcheck.org could not ascertain, but certainly didn't rule out it was because she wouldn't agree with Mayor's Palin's request if she would ban books in hypothetical situations.

I am wondering what genegrant was writing about when he says "This feels somewhat late on the draw..."; was the reference to the story or the e-mail? The e-mail was originally sent on Aug. 31, 2 days after Palin was named as the Repub VP candidate. As far as factcheck.org knocking down any of Klikenny's info, other than noted above and revised by Klikenny, factcheck.org didn't have any other comments on the information in her letter. Factcheck.org says they are working on the checking out the information in the letter and will have an article on it latter.

As noted in Kilkenny’s 2nd e-mail in the SF Chronicle, 30 journalists have checked her info and none have found errors other than the changes noted above. I will hazard a guess that when factcheck.org issues its article on Kilkenny’s e-mail there won’t be much repudiation of it as much as other possible perspective offered,

genegrant · 1 year ago

Note that I listed other sources besides factcheck.org after it, as well as mentioning they (press) also, "have confirmed, with different details." It certainly wasn't about factcheck.org as a complete source disputing her point by point. They haven't, reading their release quite carefully. I made pains to try and make that clear.

And "late to the draw," was obviously a reference to the story, How could it possibly be about Kilkenny?