A note to all from Alaskan housewife Anne Kilkenny: “So many people have asked me about what I know about Sarah Palin in the last 2 days that I decided to write something up . . .”
“Sarah Palin admitted yesterday her “beautiful daughter” Bristol was five months pregnant and would marry Levi. The baby is due in late December”….Self-described “f—in’ redneck” Levi Johnston is baby’s father…
McCain’s lousy record on teen pregnancy: “Republican John McCain, whose running mate disclosed that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, has opposed proposals to spend federal money on teen-pregnancy prevention programs and voted to require poor teen mothers to stay in school or lose their benefits.”
Washington Post‘s Sally Quinn: “McCain claims he knew about the pregnancy, and was not at all concerned. Why not? Not only do we have a woman with five children, including an infant with special needs, but a woman whose 17-year-old child will need her even more in the coming months. Not to mention the grandchild. This would inevitably be an enormous distraction for a new vice president (or president) in a time of global turmoil. Not only in terms of her job, but from a media standpoint as well. McCain’s cynical choice has created a dilemma for many women. For still-angry Hillary Clinton voters, they will have to decide if they want to vote against their concscience and political interests by voting to elect a Republican woman who’s even more conservative than McCain.”
POLITICO: New Palin details may help…
Baltimore Sun columnist: “So this is what being pandered to feels like…”
Palin sets off mommy wars: “When Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska was introduced as a vice-presidential pick, she was presented as a magnet for female voters, the epitome of everymom appeal. But since then, as mothers across the country supervise the season’s final water fights and pack book bags, some have voiced the kind of doubts that few male pundits have dared raise on television. With five children, including an infant with Down syndrome and, as the country learned Monday, a pregnant 17-year-old, Ms. Palin has set off a fierce argument among women about whether there are enough hours in the day for her to take on the vice presidency, and whether she is right to try.
DailyKos: Palin candidacy ‘Death Watch’…
Obama on Palin ‘experience’: “My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month…Our ability to manage large systems and to execute I think has been made clear over the past couple of years and certainly in terms of the legislation I’ve passed in the past couple of years, post-Katrina.”
Obama: Palin’s family off-limits. “Let me be as clear as possible. I think people’s families are off-limits, and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president. How a family deals with issues and teenage children, that shouldn’t be the topic of our politics, and I hope that anybody who is supporting me understands that’s off-limits.”
Republicans try to brush off pregnancy “tempest” at Convention: “Finally, Cindy McCain walked onstage Monday night in a yellow dress that looked like a rain slicker, to something of a hero’s welcome from the crowd. (Her daughters, Meghan and Bridget, and her mother-in-law, Roberta McCain, watched from the VIP box just off the floor.) ‘As John has been saying for the last several days,’ McCain said, ‘this is a time when we take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats.’ It’s an odd line for a party that claims to have the market cornered on patriotism; if they’re not Americans when they’re being Republicans, what are they? But if things work the way the McCain campaign hopes, the public will forget that Obama asked the 5 million-plus people on his own campaign’s e-mail list to send money to the Gulf (and redirected his Web site’s donation pages to the Red Cross).”
John McCain turns on the media, his onetime “base”: ” As the relationship has deteriorated, McCain has stopped hosting his once-famous ‘straight talk’ get-togethers on his campaign plane. He also has abandoned regular press conferences. Instead, he stops occasionally to read short written statements in front of cameras, like he did Aug. 31 in Jackson, Mississippi; then walks away from questions shouted by reporters. His campaign plane is custom configured with a lounge area designed for hosting question-and-answer sessions with the press. McCain inaugurated the lounge on one of the plane’s first flights and hasn’t used it since.”
