FYI:
You know that sinister 527 that Governor Palin was a founding member of and shows her links to Alaska’s corrupt Senator?
According to the IRS filing Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service Inc, question 12. Describe the purpose of the organization:
To increase the number of Republican women in elected offices and in appointed governmental and political positions, including advisory and regulatory commissions through training and education.
How totally underhanded and creepy that a Republican woman politician would be part of a group that trains Republican women to enter politics, just like the Emerge programs for Democratic women in many states as noted by Rutgers in their list of Recruitment and Training Programs for Women Candidates . </sarcasm>
There was a time when liberals did research.
Update: If you think I’m being harsh read Stirling Newberry: The mishandling of Sarah Palin.
33 comments
i swear, it’s getting awfully difficult to keep with the liberal lies and sloppy thinking/writing/research [or lack thereof].
i remember seeing that item in my furious travels around the intertoobz, but didn’t bookmark it. thanks for the link. have you got a defending sarah barracuda category yet? you’ve almost got enough posts already to warrant one.
I’m not defending her as much as objecting to people becoming what liberals are supposed to hate and destroying any chance of really changing the situation by throwing away all of the painfully accumulated credibility of liberal blogs.
They are attacking her as a woman, as an Alaskan, as just about everything except a Republican politician.
The only way she gets any power is if John McCain gets elected. The solution is to work against John McCain’s election. If Dan Quayle couldn’t stop the election of GHW Bush, what makes anyone think that attacking Governor Palin is going to do anything. Lloyd Bentsen shredded Dan Quayle with the classic “Jack Kennedy” retort, but that didn’t get Dukakis elected.
Who are these liberal blogs that you are complaining about, Bryan? I’ve not seen the blogs I read doing what you say.
dKOS, TPM. Dday at Digby’s, Talk Left, every major A-list except Atrios. They have all been doing it for some time, and they aren’t retracting anything after it has been shown to be bogus. They are passing on slander as facts, and don’t bother to do any checking.
You won’t find most of them on my blog roll, because I started cutting them when they were attacking Clinton with the same sexist crap.
What Mahakal said. I have seen a video of Ted Stevens endorsing Gov. Palin (which I hope you’ll admit is a legitimate hit), but I haven’t seen the Ted Stevens 527 reference.
Bryan, this is twice now that you’ve tossed into the discussion a general accusation of things bloggers did without providing examples from specific blogs. In those two cases, I’ve been lucky; I haven’t happened to trip over those impermissible modes of criticism in my own blog posts. Maybe it would be easier for the partisans among us if you just listed the permitted ways to hammer Gov. Palin in this campaign. (Said only half tongue-in-cheek.)
[Added: I notice that you’ve named names in a comment posted after I began this one. Thank you.]
For the record, regarding 527s, I have issues with any approach to campaign ad funding, legal or illegal, that allows the actual funding source (person or org) to go unidentified, no matter who is using it. Perhaps “spending is speech” (don’t get me started) and therefore should not be restricted, but the public deserves to know who is really doing the speaking/spending.
There are different kinds of 527s that serve different purposes. I assume that they asked Senator Stevens to use his name to increase their fund raising. They aren’t running ads, they are operating training workshops.
There should be a different category for the people who are running advocacy ads, as opposed to doing grunt political work, but they all get lumped together.
Steve, you are complaining about specific actions, policies, or beliefs she has. You are going after her as a politician, not as a person. I’m not complaining about that. That isn’t going to alienate voters, and isn’t going cost anyone credibility.
I object to the big guys, the people the media thinks of when they say “liberal bloggers”, making like Instapundit and throwing out a link to a scurrilous article for “plausible deniability”, and the cracks about “trailer trash”. The treat Alaskans as a different species, and too much of it is derogatory about the working class in general.
Obama has already taken a hit on the “bitter” comment with working class voters, and the A-List are reinforcing that and the “elitist” charges. Maybe his campaign thinks they can win with a big turnout by young voters, but that hasn’t happened yet, while the people being annoyed do turn out.
I am specifically trying not to build an easy to retrieve collection of this garbage. I trying not to help the other side, which is exactly what a collection would do.
you’re absolutely correct, my use of the phrase ‘defending sarah palin’ was laziness on my part and i realize that’s not what you’re doing.
I’m sorry if I’m being a little defensive, but I have people questioning my motives because I have already given up on the Democrats. Giving up on the Democrats doesn’t mean voting for a Republican.
Bryan, when you’re finding these inconsistencies, have you mailed Josh Marshall? I’ve known him to be a real mensch, so to speak and has owned up to making mistakes.
Speaking of Josh Marshall, I read TPM daily and have not noticed any inappropriate posts. I hope you’ll point out an example or two, and like mapaghimagsik said, drop them a line.
I’m glad you’re not going over to the other side, at least.
understandable. i’ve become a tad hyper-reactive myself.
Regarding Josh Marshall, given that he is one of the reasons I am no longer a member of the Democratic Party, I would really appreciate if his name never appeared here again.
TPM left the blog roll months ago.
He is still quoted, so I know he is still at it.
Bryan, you’re the one who brought up TPM, and you are smearing good liberal blogs without providing any basis. Sorry if I don’t feel like your disaffection is relevant.
Since you’re on this research kick, did the 527 in question actually train any Republican women for leadership positions? Other than, perhaps, Sarah Palin?
Mahakal if you think that distorting facts to justify disenfranchising voters defines a “good liberal blog” you are welcome to it, I rather thought that was a Republican tactic.
Yes, Michael, it has held regularly scheduled classes for women just like all of the other “Excellence in Public Service” franchises in other states using a standard curriculum, something that took about 15 seconds to find out if you were willing to make any effort, which obviously you are not. Rumor and innuendo are so much easier than facts.
I’ve been hunting for six minutes now, and I haven’t been able to turn up anything of the sort, Bryan. CampaignMoney.com‘s report on the 527 in question shows no contributions or expenses. I’m having Acrobat issues, so I can’t get the IRS form you link to in your post to load. The Rutgers page you link to doesn’t have a link on it to the Ted Stevens 527. And a blog post from Monday at the Washington Post, while noting that the organization “…was designed to serve as a political boot camp for Republican women in [Alaska],” also notes that the board members of the 527 (including Sarah Palin) “…were legally allowed to raise as much money as they wanted from corporations or unions or unlimited donations from individuals.” It went on to note that there was “…no record in IRS filings as to how much the group eventually raised.”
So no, I’m not prepared to stipulate that Palin’s involvement with this group is as innocuous as you’re trying to suggest. But even if it were that innocuous, it’s still a knock against her attempt to portray herself as a crusader for ethics and reform. She was in bed (metaphorically speaking) with Ted Stevens all along–and also has ties to Veco, the company that’s been accused of attempting to bribe Stevens.
Michael, you weren’t one of my students, so I take no responsibility for you inability to effectively use a search engine.
As for the rest, it sounds like a personal problem.
I was using Google. And I have a degree in library and information science. Trust me when I tell you, I know my way around the intertubes and around a database. I didn’t find anything of the sort of proof you claim to have found in 15 seconds. I’m not saying it’s not there, just that I didn’t find it–and I certainly didn’t find it on the first page of the Google results. Or from any of the links that you provided.
I used a search term derived from the information in the post and it was on the first page of results in the middle.
I have a summa cum laud degree in computers and information sciences, have been writing code for nearly four decades, have been an administrator of systems, networks, and databases and was on what is now called the Internet when it had a leased telephone line backbone operating at 64Kbps. I think I know a wee bit more about it than you do, and I wasn’t “looking for unicorns”.
The fact that you went to the “CampaignMoney” site shows that you don’t know how to do the necessary search, but are attempting to find something that doesn’t exist.
BTW, when Adobe isn’t working you can see the sites in HTML by using Google. The feature has been available for years. Of course, since you know, based on your wonderful training that PDF files are in fact, just text files, you could download it and use an standard editor. You don’t get the graphics but the information is there.
Bryan, why be mysterious? Why not provide a link to the Google search results you found?
Mahakal, what in hell else is needed beyond the official, signed under penalty of perjury, IRS filing required to apply for registration as a tax exempt organization under chapter 537 of the Tax Code verified by the Rutgers University Center for American Women and Politics.
The only connection to Ted Stevens is the use of his name as a prominent Alaskan politician, the same way the Kansas group is the Dwight Eisenhower Excellence in Public Service, and Illinois uses Lincoln.
Anyone claiming that there is anything more needs to provide some proof.
There are a lot more connections to Ted Stevens than that, Bryan.
That is off topic, Mahakal. The point was the 527, not that Republican politicians in Alaska know each other and cooperate. It would be pretty damn strange if a state or local political office holder didn’t try to court Alaska’s senior Senator.
Illinois politicians sucked up to Dennis Hastert because he was Speaker of the House, not necessarily because they liked him.
So Bryan, how do you know that the 527 “held regularly scheduled classes for women just like all of the other “Excellence in Public Service” franchises in other states using a standard curriculum”?
What I am able to find out is that it was “designed” as a political boot camp for women, but there is nothing on what it actually did, there seems to be no transparency to this 527, not even as to how much money they raised.
This seems a pretty good article.
Where is the proof that they did anything else? You need some evidence and some proof before you make allegations if you expect to have any credibility. Every time you make a charge without any proof, you are making it more difficult to actually prove real misdeeds.
Pretty soon you are going to hear “there they go again”. Reagan got away untouched because of stupid early allegations that had no basis in fact.
Why in hell would they bother to do anything else? Ted Stevens had a perfectly nasty PAC to take care of all of the things that you are trying to pin in this 527. The PAC isn’t going to face major fines or anything else when they fund attack ads and support candidates. The PAC provides the plausible deniability.
Democrats want to lose. That is the only explanation for the truly ignorant manner in which this campaign is being operated. They are avoiding the issues that people really care about, and focusing on crap that is of no interest to anyone living outside the Beltway. This kind of “gotcha” with no research is exactly why I say the left has degraded to the level of LGF.
You’re right, Bryan. We’d better be careful not to criticize Republicans between now and November. They might call us names and make people feel sorry for them. Since everything is the fault of the Democratic party, we should just carry water for the McCain campaign instead.
And that is exactly why the Democrats are going to lose because they don’t know how to fight. There are plenty of reasons to criticize the Republicans, but the Democrats would rather screw around with rumor and innuendo that proven facts. And when they get caught, they lose credibility.
Joe Biden wanders around telling the world how much he likes John McCain and what a great guy McCain is, and then starts talking about problems. Of course, all anyone remembers is that Joe Biden thinks John McCain is a great guy. This is the Democratic attack dog?
But those bloggers better be polite or the Republicans will say that Obama is responsible for them.
The Obama campaign is responsible for taking out much of the real fact checking and response that the second line provided. Well, they got what they wanted and they are going to have to live with the result.
Very true. 🙂
You don’t have to be polite, but you do have to be right.