The Republicans had a good night. But.... I don't think they did so well with Bush leading into the prime time network coverage though. Plus all the cable news networks talked about all night long was Palin, and none of it in a good light.

This liberal media needs to stop focusing on her daughter.

Her daughter could've took the easy way out and murdered her baby but she is doing the right thing by having the baby and getting married.

I am beginning to like Palin.

The media last night wasn't only focusing on her daughter. They were focusing more on "troopergate", her husband's connection to the Alaskan Independence Party, and the fact it appears now that McCain picked her literally at the last minute when it was clear he couldn't get away with choosing Lieberman. Apparently McCain chose Lieberman on or around 9/24, but was talked out of it on the 27th or 28th.

Mig, sorry. That's a complete and total copout. Perhaps the Republicans should have left President Clinton's family alone when they felt the need to expose his affair in front of the world. I'm sure that it was hurtful to Chelsea to see her family's private matters plastered all over the place.

Governor Palin made a conscious choice to accept the offer from Senator McCain. She knew that her daughter was pregnant. She knew that she was relatively unknown and that people would be curious to learn about her.

She knew that her daughter would be carrying this baby with the whole world watching. It was her choice, and you have to live with the consequences of your choices.

Btw, where did you get the term "liberal" media? Was it the "liberal" media that heralded the story of Senator Obama's pastor? It's the media, they are going to report what they believe will sell newspapers or give them ratings or bring them hits to their websites.

As I've said numerous times, I think that a candidate's family should be off-limits, but that's not reality.

Edit: Oh, and last time I checked murder was illegal and abortion wasn't. I understand that perhaps you are not pro-choice, but if she did decide to have an abortion, then that's her legal right.

I too respect her daughter's decision. I don't think that media attention on this will have an adverse effect on the campaign as most Americans aren't shocked by a 17 year old getting pregnant. On the contrary, I'm sure most are sympathetic, and the issue makes Palin and her family more real. The baby's father is apparently a high school hockey star, so it's no surprise he slipped one past the goalie .

The story won't be in the news long. I'm more interested in the troopergate issue, which is certainly relevant.

Classic. There's no better way to kill the excitement of naming a fresh, new, vibrant VP candidate by calling her by the wrong name at the party's convention.

The Republicans need some young faces to liven their convention.

You are right SB Palin knew full well what was going on in her family but I hope they drop it.

Maybe it's just me but It seems to me the media leans toward the left.

It's a known fact how you feel about abortion and how I feel. Murder is murder I don't care when the act happens if it's in the womb or someone who's 100.

It does, for the most part. If you need the total opposite, switch to Fox News.

I wonder if Bambi feels the same way.

It's not just you. I believe there is a general media bias towards the left although there are conservative media outlets, like FoxNews.

What did you guys think of that tribute to that Navy Seal who died in Iraq? Very moving.

I bet the kid is going to be named "Silvertab."

Kudos to Obama for pointing out that he was born to an 18 year old, and that he would fire anyone in his campaign who made the issues in the Palin family issues in the campaign.

As for the convention, it looked like a bunch of grumpy old men .... the kind who yell at kids from being on their lawn.

As for the Palin thing, can you imagine if Obama or Biden had a daughter who was pregnant and unmarried? All the right wingers would be saying this proves they have no values, bla bla bla. Seems like I remember Dan Quayle getting his panties in a wad over Murphy Brown. How times change.

You mean...pretty much what the left is doing right now towards Palin?

It's not the daughter they're focusing on. Her pregnancy is just a segue to the broader topic of how the right wing maligns the values of those on the left. At least since the vice-presidency of Spirew Agnew (60s/70s), the right has impugned the religiosity, morality, and patriotism of liberals. And one big way in which they have done so is to point to premarital sex among teens of liberal households and their pregnancy rate. Well, now you have a rightwinger whose daughter is pregnant. Should we suppose that the Palin's have eschewed morality in the upbringing of their children? Should we ask just what kind of moral instruction they've received? Is her pregnancy the result of an absentee mother who pursued a political career rather than give full, complete attention to raising the children she conceived? If it were Chelsea Clinton who was pregnant you can be sure that the right would not be asking these questions. Instead, they would be stating with certainty that they were the cause of her pregnancy.

I think Dr. Laura Schlesinger would give more than a piece of her mind to Sarah Palin.

I have to be honest with you. I haven't heard anything NEGATIVE about Governor Palin OR her daughter. I've just heard that her daughter is pregnant. I haven't heard or read anything saying that makes either one of them a bad person. I haven't heard or read anything that points her out as a bad mother, or her daughter a bad girl. So where is this negative press???

The criticism I have heard is that she may have fired someone because he wouldn't fire her sister's ex. I've heard that she originally supported the Alaskan "bridge to nowhere", although McCain specifically criticized the funding for it. I've heard that she and/or her husband have been involved in a political party that calls for Alaska's secession from the Union.

Those are areas of way more concern than her daughter's pregnancy.

Way more important SB. There's also her quote that by being in the the Iraq war the U.S. is doing "God's will."

Oh, my. Well, you know that the Republicans are going to give the war their full-throated support. They have no choice, really.

I just heard Laura Ingrahm state how excited and energized Republicans are about the Palin choice. I wonder why they weren't so excited and energized over the McCain pick.

I remember back in 1996 Bob Dole stating how his VP choice of Jack Kemp would energize Republicans. Of course, we all know how that energy dissipated.

But it does give one pause when a party relies on a VP choice to provide what that party's presidential choice should provide.

I'm a former journalist. My experience tells me that reporters and editors who work on the news pages don't have a "liberal" or "conservative" bias--they have a bias toward cynicism and know-it-all attitudes. They think it's essential for the media to react critically and cynically to all people in authority, especially Presidents.

Since the GOP has held the White House for 36 of the last 55 years, more cynicism and criticism has landed on Republican Presidents than on Democrats. But just consider: the last Democrat who was treated well by the media was JFK. His successor, LBJ, was probably the most-hated by the media until W. No one in the media liked Carter, and the Clintons got their ass handed to them re. Travelgate, Whitewater and Monica.

The conventional wisdom now is that the media are in love with Obama. Well, the media spun the flap over Jeremiah Wright for a couple of months, and it almost derailed the Obama campaign. Meanwhile, McCain avidly sought and welcomed the support of Rev. John Hagee, the gay- and Catholic-basher; and dumped him only after Hagee made some totally outrageous remark about Hitler and Israel. That flap played in the media for less than 24 hours.

As a former journalist and as a lawyer who represented newspapers for more than a decade, I can tell you that there is definitely a media bias, but it cannot easily be defined by political ideology. Certain reporters and editorial staffs definitely have their "darlings," and I cannot say how often I have seen someone favored by a paper or a reporter be protected when something runs amock in his or her career, and someone not favored be excoriated for doing the same misdeed.

Recently here in the Tampa Bay area an African American lawyer was running for the democratic nomination for a state legislator's seat. This guy has gone through several wives, had a well known addition to crack cocaine (he is allegedly clean after two rehabs) trouble with the Bar and some minor criminal history. The local paper endorsed him saying he "has learned from his mistakes." Absolute bias.

Nationally look at the free pass McCain gets on all his gaffes.
Again, abslute bias.

There is also an attitude that anyone can be taken down, anytime. Cross the media and watch how fast they'll do it.

Finally reporters have a tendency to buy into some kind of narrative and when the facts get in the way of the narrative, too often they ignore the facts. Examples...McCain is a free wheeling Maverick. He isn't. Biden is a "lunch bucket" working class guy. Not really.

All true. The media like to pigeon-hole people and that will be it. They will push the square peg into that round hole, no matter what.

To quote a former Professor of mine, "Ideas always win out over facts."

In other news, Obama has gone from -5, to +2 in Ohio, in a new poll taken today.

YES.

Really, as I made the point earlier about the "experience" issue, logic and point of attack against the other side just amazingly disapears when it happens to one of your own.

Should the Palin kid be the center of all this? No. Really, do I care? No. I mean, Presidential candidates are known for dysfunctional families. Where's Billy Beer when you need it for such headaches?



Washington Post months back ran some story of how back in the mid-1990s, McCain told this joke at a GOP Senate lunch:

Q: Why is Chelsea so ugly?
A: Janet Reno is her father

Whatever that story is true or not, I don't know.

But the irony is that Chelsea was an...."awkward" kid, to put it nicely...and yet she grew up looking beautiful and well-presented when she was out campaigning for her mother in the primaries.

I may think her father is an asshole scumbag, and her mother a bitch, but I've got nothing against Chelsea.

Then again, I once got in trouble years back at a liberal-biased message board for saying that I had no problem with Laura Bush at all.

No shit.

And not just that mate!

MINNESOTA:
Obama 53
McCain 41

IOWA:
Obama 55
McCain 40

http://thepage.time.com/2008/09/03/timecnn-battleground-polls-2/

Now if I was McCain, I wouldn't worry about Minnesota, which despite nearly going against KErry in 2004, is traditionally a Democratic state. Shit, they're the lone state that went for freakin Mondale in 1984.

But Iowa....that polling above gives pause. Iowa went for Bush in 2008, after going for Gore, and one of McCain's strategies to win the White House was to retain the Bush Red states from 2004, though Colorado/Iowa/Virginia/Florida/Ohio/Montana/Nevada/New Mexico have been fucking shakey at this rate for him.

Yes, MONTANA.

But the Iowa numbers is not good news for McCain.

Obama is now up by 13 in New Mexico. Another state that was Red in 2004.

Hate to quote from liberal-wanker blogs, but this reverts to a theme presented months back, of the so-called "Obamacons," or Republicans supporting Obama (D), much like the Reagan Democrats who landed the Gipper the biggest electoral landslide in history in 1984.

Mayor (R) of Fairbanks, Alaska endorses Obama

Good evening.

We are Americans first. We're not Democrats. We're not Republicans. And I stand before you as a father, as a husband, as a mayor, as a proud Alaskan, but first and foremost I stand before you as an American.

I'm not here to speak against John McCain; I am a registered Republican.

I am here to endorse Barack Obama for the presidency of the United States of America.[/i]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/3/165855/3800/785/585001

Let me share a dark dirty secret:

I voted for Dubya in '04.

John Kerry was a joke.

I'll probably vote for Obama. I liked McCain in 2000...

I supported McCain in 2000, voted more against Bush than I did for Kerry, and I'm supporting for Obama at this rate.