The privacy line will be spun as "Katie trapped her!" Bank on it.

Palin is like one of those boobs answering Jay Leno's Jaywalking questions. I guess there just aren't many people in Alaska.

Sometimes it's hard to understand her through the incoherant run on sentences, but I think she said that while she disagrees with some SC decisions, as mayor, Governor and VP she was/will be able to change them. But then she is on record saying she doesn't know what a VP does. And she has a record of not understanding the limits of mayor or Governor.

Joe Scarborough just now asked McCain about all the pork added to the bailout bill last night. McCain said "well, that's just how Washington works", and then "that's why we need to veto these things." I wish Scarborough would ask whether McCain was recommending a veto of the bailout bill.

Sarah, Here's a good place to cram for the debate in case Gwen asks ya 'bout Supreme Court stuff.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/index.html

Good luck. Oh, and thanks for giving me something to look forward to tonight. I can't remember ever thinking a VP debate was worth watching. I think you'll do just fine if you remember one thing, the moment you start to answer a question, try thinking first!

Danp, I thought Joe was going for it. Mika did instead LOL. Jesus. And he STILL said Obama "phoned it in" ! What a douchebag.

"In the great history of America..."

The hairs on the back of my neck started to rise as soon as she went there. She shouldn't opine, positively or negatively, on a history that she clearly hasn't examined with even a passing interest.

It's pretty simple, really. No amount of cramming can make up for a lifetime of study, and Palin hasn't done the studying. John McCain wasn't too concerned about that when he picked her, and figured campaign funds could pay for the tutoring. Problem is the breadth of her ignorance has been exposed, and there's not enough tutoring in the world in to save her in this handful of weeks, as the McCain camp is awkwardly learning. This should have been a safe position for Palin, but even the not-so-subtle nuances of politicking are lost on her, because she simply doesn't care to _know_ about all this stuff. She can't come of as an ignoramus, so she'll bluff, and sometimes it'll come back to bite her. In the end this is just more of what we get in a country where elections can be won on character rather than on policies, experience, or ideas. Think folksy, down home president who never in eight years projected a genuine passion for politics or for governing.

God!!

Asked about the World Series chances and who he bet on, McCain finishes with "Shows you why I'm not a rich man".

Waaa??

Shouldn't this make the far right even angrier:

"[As VP, I] wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today."

Row v. Wade is the law of the land, and Sarah Palin just committed to supporting it, no?

She may not understand foreign or domestic policies, but they no doubt assumed she would at least understand Roe and the right to privacy. She doesn't. Not even a little.

But, Steve, you're generously assuming Republican positions on legal issues are a matter of logical principles. They aren't -- they're a matter of expedience in promiting the conservative agenda (Exhibit A: Bush v Gore).

It doesn't matter a bit if Palin actually does believe in a Constitutional right to privacy -- she'll appoint justices who will strike down Roe -- with a lot of mumbo-jumbo about "no litmus test" that, after Steven and Alito, the media and Senate will still pretend to believe -- and not trouble her vapid little head about it.

I hate to belabor the comparisons to Bush, but how much of what his Administration has done do you think he really understands, or even cares about? Palin doesn't have to understand -- Palin doesn't have to think -- as long as she jumps through the right hoops.

In short, she's a typical Republican.

Pundits and conservative intellectuals (stop laughing)/political operatives might cringe at Palin, but how deeply does the ordinary pro-life demonstrator understand how a right to privacy is the central tenet behind Roe v. Wade? I'd guess that their reasoning doesn't go much beyond Roe v. Wade says that abortion is legal, therefore Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Privacy doesn't even enter the discussion. Therefore the fact that Palin's logic is self-contradictory wouldn't even register. So hammering her on it won't work in lessening conservative support for her.

The legal arguments concerning privacy rights are far too subtle to cause much of a backlash among the rank-and-file right-to-lifers. Sounding like a bot, however, will hurt her. Who knew the AI folks had come so far to take a governorship?

"...then there's a right to keep medical decisions confidential, not a state's right but a fundamental Constitutional right."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Be careful what you ask for. Courts have asserted the right to intervene in medical decisions in numerous circumstances the Left/Democrats/progressives/liberals find little or no quarrel with. Certainly few of us feel our Constitutional rights are trampled when such intervention assures medical treatment for a child of fundamentalist parents who are denying him medical care, a denial likely leading to his death. Procedures, treatments, drugs, vaccines, transfusions, etc have been forced upon such parents in order to save a child's life. Should these parents be accorded the same "right to choose" as a woman seeking an abortion?

It's 'gotcha journalism, because it's a 'gotcha' point in the torrtured Republican ideology. Privacy? You betcha! You'll get my guns when--oh, you're talking about abortion? Then, um, no.

It's like the moment when GHW Bush answered a question about a daughter of his getting pregnant, that it would be her decision and the family would stand by it. It was an honest response, one which most families would agree with--but the wrong one ideologically.

Sarah didn't even know it was a pitfall, though. She didn't even know enough t give a fluttery brauty pageant answer. There was an "Great! One I can answer!" eagerness in her response.

My mentor, the great Stan Lee, had a line in this regard. "What? You mean I have to use my highly-evolved brain power on plain ordinary thinking?"

I'm starting to feel a little sorry for the woman. She was thrust upon the national stage (of course she could have declined), and in typical republican form, neatly packaged and polished and shined for the base. The problem is that this time, THANK GOD, the old republican tricks - gotcha soundbites, witty little retorts, rhetoric over substance, divisive wedge issue grandstanding - simply aren't working. After 8 years of the production that was Bu$h, Americans finally see through the purple haze.

Palin is simply out of her league, and it's not just a reflection on her, it's a reflection on the whole mindset of the republican party.

Check out the comments on that CBS site. The paid right-wing trolls are working overtime.

Yes I agree. They won't care WHAT she says as long as they WIN.

Then they can make her do what they want.

She's just a woman, after all. She knows her place, etc.

Must be weird, to be her right now. Never understood how women can consider themselves subservient to men, but there you go.

Or maybe she thinks she will stand up to them, the poor thing.

Yeah, but she can shoot and gut a moose. That'll come in very handy when Putin really rears his head over Alaska and drops a nuke onto Fairbanks just for shits and giggles. This country, like it has over the past eight years, will deserve her and McAce if they elect them. Me? I'll opt for watching my new DVD Box Set of Felix the Cat cartoons and begin digging my back yard Fall Out Shelter...

I agree with Gregory. The moral (really emotional) basis that actually underlies the Right's views on matters like this -- mainly, in this case, that sex is scary/powerful/bad -- can't be used in legal argument, or even really political argument. So a mixed bag of irrelevant stuff needs to be deployed instead. You can't expect that to be terribly coherent, and they don't.

Writing in the New York Times today, Roger Cohen puts the gamble McCain is taking --especially given his age and health-- with our country in perspective:

I know one thing: this is no time for further gambling. John McCain
rolled the dice on Sarah Palin. I'm grateful to Bob Rice of Tangent
Capital for pointing out that the actuarial risk, based on mortality
tables, of Palin becoming president if the Republican ticket wins the
election is about 1 in 6 or 7.

That's the same odds as your birthday falling on a Wednesday, or being
delayed on two consecutive flights into Newark airport. Is America
ready for that?

Full article by Cohen is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/02/opinion/02Cohen.html

I am so insulted that McCain selected this "token" woman to run as his VP. Picking a woman intelligent enough to know the basics of our government and somehting about the SC and some minor things about international affairs and something about our ecomony - GOD he should have picked.... me or any number of the thousands of educated, mature, and well versed women in this country. Any of us would be infinitely better than Palin - I just hope that she does not undo the decades of progress women have suffered for. Yes, she is an INSULT.

Biden should just shut up, answer the question asked, not pontificate, not defend, and lether spout and run on like a dork. He should then just ask her .... "what" did you just say? He will be better off if he gets her on the defensive about what she is supposedly trying to say and not get defensive.

The Christian Right will assume (correctly) that she's either stupid or lying but that she's the best chance they'll ever have to overturn Roe V Wade. At this point, every single one of her current supporters just want her to shut up and not lose any more ground.

While I share people's confusion over WHY he picked her, I don't feel like I want her replaced.

Replacing her could turn this race around so let's be careful what we wish for.

Hey, c'mon -- she's got great gams.

The "Thrilla from Wasilla" has morphed into "Sled Dog" Sarah -- loyal, does what she's told, barks on queue and not an ounce of wit.

I'd guess that their reasoning doesn't go much beyond Roe v. Wade says that abortion is legal, therefore Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Privacy doesn't even enter the discussion.

Yeah, but that's the problem. The leaders of the anti-choice crowd -- including John McCain -- are on record as wanting to overturn not only Roe, but also Griswold, the right-to-privacy decision that underpins it.

Unfortunately, Griswold directly conserns not abortion but birth control. That's the ultimate target of the anti-choice crowd. Of course they'd rather not have low-information, "abortion is icky" voters understand their agenda, because it's extremely radical and far out of the mainstream.

I completely disagree with you Wom67. Biden's response to Roe v. Wade was extraordinary. He spoke perfectly of the diversity and complexity of our citizenry and how that ruling and all it's attendant rulings tries to address the opposing concerns of our complex society. No other country in the world attempts to balance things out like this. Biden's response makes me proud to be an American.

Right-wingers care about one thing: winning. The Mayberry Machiavellis don't sit around parsing constitutional law. They don't care what Sarah Palin says or what she believes or what she says she believes. They care about whether or not she'll be effective in pushing their agenda.

She is the same vacuous dolt now that she was a month ago--but she was polling much better then. All of their current "concerns" may be veiled in references to competence, but they come down to one thing: she's tanking in the polls.

It was the same thing with Bush: he flouted every so-called conservative principle--going on nation-building missions, running up record deficits, ratcheting up government intrusion into people's lives, but they loved him -- until he sank in the polls. Then they said he "betrayed" them. Same policies, different poll numbers, and they abandoned him in droves.

If right-wingers dump Palin, it won't be because she misspoke about a constitutional issue. It will be because she's no longer popular enough to help them.

When you think about it this has been a great two weeks for Democrats.

Last week George Bush declared an end to the Reagan Revolution when he said government was "vital" to solving the country's economic crisis. Reagan's 1981 "government IS the problem" first inaugural address was defenestrated.

Now Sarah Palin has undermined 35 years of conservative jurisprudence by validating privacy arguments used by pro-choice advocates.

It takes them a generation or two but Republicans eventually come around. They're just slow.

Perhaps it's deliberate. If she doesn't have the first idea what she's talking about, but mixes contradictory positions in her long, rambling answer, she can just wait for the analysis to point out what portions matched up, and say,"That!! I meant that!!".

Still, it's a risky debating model. She runs the hazard (obviously) of an answer which is not only senseless, but appears to favour the opposing viewpoint.

wom67: Biden should just shut up, answer the question asked, not pontificate, not defend, and let her spout and run on like a dork. He should then just ask her .... "what" did you just say?

I agree with most of this except the last part.

All Joe needs to do is answer the questions to the best of his ability. And perhaps sprinkle a few quips at McCain. He ought to ignore the zingers she's got enqueued. However insulting they may be. Such as, a la McCain: "Senator Biden doesn't understand..."

Stay focused. Stay courteous. Show gravitas.
And most importantly: Show understanding.
If that's not good enough, nothing is.

The right wing doesn't care about logical consistency of the sort explored by Hilzoy and Steve. They don't want govt meddling in what they consider private matters---like sex education---and they don't want women (esp. other people's daughters) to have access to abortion (or in the case for Feminists for Life, hormonal birth control aka the Pill) and they don't see how those views conflict. They don't think the constitution requires separation of church and state, either. The logical arguments presented here have NO, ZERO, GOOSE-EGG effect on the 27% (or is it now 19%) dead enders. For them: Obama will forever be a Muslim + black Christian, a Communist and too young and inexperienced to be President, and Sarah Palin will forever be a Real White Christian American and have superb executive experience and small town common sense (after all, she was head of the PTA and mayor of a population equal to a block of Chicago.)

What is this phenomenon? The French Jacobins, the Confederate States of America, the Stalinists, the Nazis, take your pick.

Despite this terrible performance I think Sarah will surprise us tonight and not look obviously awful. The format of short answers only and no cross-talk favors her avoidance tricks, and Gwen Ifill has never struck me as a terribly astute questioner. (OTOH, neither did Couric; I'll be pleased to be wrong about this.) Assuming she beats the basement level expectations the villagers have set for her, Palin moves from compound fracture to bleeding sore on the McCain campaign.

I think you are all over-analyzing. While many Americans have ambiguous or negative feelings about abortion, a majority oppose banning it. That's why McCain speaks mostly in dog-whistles and code on the subject. Palin is just lying, because if she was forthright about her views, it would hurt the Republicans' chances of winning the election.

Just heard on npr that a recent poll has 85 percent think she's not prepared to be ?@.

She's done, folks.

Her only hope tonight is to knock it out of the park.The odds of that happening? Damn low.

jhh,

Very perceptive. Conservatives are more than willing to give up individual rights and allow government meddling in our pritate affairs as long as it is on the side of positions conservatives agree with -- anti-terrorism, anti-abortion, gay marriage, religion and ID in the classroom, sex education, proper books in public libraries.

The one issue conservatives are consistent with is guns -- don't mess with anyone's right to own an automatic weapon. Why is that?

Damn blackberry.

?@ is VP above.
Sorry.

"I guess being a 'Community Organizer' is something like being a Small Town Mayor, she taunts-- "except that you have actual responsibilities."

Forget the chattering classes frame and their conventional wisdom. Palin's challenge tonight is to prove to the world that she's competent to take over if something happens to McCain.

McCain's age and health is the real game-changer and will make people look at his vp differently in years past.

And if the real thing don't do the trick
You'd better make up something quick
You're gonna burn, burn, burn, burn, burn it to the wick
Ooo... Barracuda. Oh yeah!

"Despite this terrible performance I think Sarah will surprise us tonight and not look obviously awful."

Unless she shows up tonight suddenly transformed into a constitutional scholar and incisive expert on foreign affairs she's in deep trouble. The moment she gets lost in a jumble of fractured sentances that call to mind the Couric interviews or utters anything that even whispers Tina Fey she will have lost. And people will be sitting on the edge of their seats waiting for it. Her problem is that she's become a national joke. Merely being polished and rehearsed won't save her.

I'm speechless over the right to privacy thing --- this is the core of everything the right believes in. I mean, this is the equivalent of Obama saying in an interview that he didn't believe in separation of church and state.

But it looks like she gets away with this, though conservative legal thinkers have got to be banging their heads on their desks right now. The non-thinking right doesn't care in the least --- mooseburgers for all and what's a Supreme Court?

conservative legal thinkers have got to be banging their heads on their desks right now. The non-thinking right doesn't care in the least --- mooseburgers for all and what's a Supreme Court?

paul, your premise above seems to imply that there's a difference between "conservative legal thinkers" and "the non-thinking right." (Indeed, it implies that "conservative legal thinkers" exist.)

I'd call that an assertion not in evidence.

There's a constitutional right to privacy but it should be left to the states and not the US Supreme Court??? She doesn't just want to overturn Roe, she wants to overturn Marbury v. Madison. Holy crap. "McCain*Palin -- Idiots First."

I'm grateful to Bob Rice of Tangent
Capital for pointing out that the actuarial risk, based on mortality tables, of Palin becoming president if the Republican ticket wins the
election is about 1 in 6 or 7. That's the same odds as your birthday falling on a Wednesday, or being delayed on two consecutive flights into Newark airport.

To put it in more frightening perspective, 1 in 6 is the same odds as in Russian Roulette....

In other words, she seemingly supports Griswold, which should come as a shock to the christian right. Though I suspect if someone actually asked her whether she agreed with Griswold, Palin would admit to being a big fan of the Vacation movies.

The moment she gets lost in a jumble of fractured sentances that call to mind the Couric interviews

Won't happen. Format asks for short answers and no follow-ups, so she can easily evade and filibuster. Check out her Alaska debates, where she feigned competence fairly decently.

John "maverick" McCain voted with 'the most Liberal member of the Senate' and 72 other senators yesterday. But then, he also said he was against pork bills -- like the one he voted for.

John "experienced senator" McCain picked Sarah Palin who doesn't even know the primary Supreme Court decisions which relate to the abortion issue which is important to her. Why would he pick someone who isn't capable of doing the job of Vice President AND who isn't even capable of handling the political issues?

John McCain isn't believable, he's petty and his V.P. choice isn't capable.

We can't trust John McCain.

Intellectual foundation and conservatism is an oxymoron

Certainly few of us feel our Constitutional rights are trampled when such intervention assures medical treatment for a child of fundamentalist parents who are denying him medical care, a denial likely leading to his death. Procedures, treatments, drugs, vaccines, transfusions, etc have been forced upon such parents in order to save a child's life. Should these parents be accorded the same "right to choose" as a woman seeking an abortion?

So, Steve, your argument is that an embryo or fetus has the same moral and legal standing as a fully-developed and born human being, so therefore getting an abortion is the same as denying your 5-year-old child medical treatment?

Otherwise, your example makes no sense since the woman getting an abortion is making a decision about her own health care and the parents denying care for their child are making a decision about someone else's health care.

Remember, this idiot will be responsible for breaking a tie in the Senate.

How many hours of debate prep do you think Palin is going through today?
http://www.entertonement.com/clips/31715/Katie-Couric/Sarah-Palin/CBS-Evening-News/What-Other-Supreme-Court-Decisions-Do-You-Disagree-With

I agree that the format of this debate is favorable to Palin doing adaquate. And if Biden sicks to the questions, avoids getting defensive and yes, snips at McCain some he will do fine.

Palin will probably do fine in this format as she has memorized all the rigt things to say. If there was cross talk and good come back questions asked then she would trip up but this will not be the case so I am afraid she may do fine and then the Repubs will shout that she wins and all is fine.

Not with me - she is an insult to women and McCain is more of an insult to women because he picked her for all the wrong reasons. Those reasons will hurt this country if they win.

"...Palin doesn't have the foggiest idea how our constitutional system works..."

...and doesn't care.