[Notes below by Tom Gross]

WOULD OBAMA BE A CENTRIST IN OFFICE?

With just over two weeks to go, it looks like Barack Obama will win the election, possibly by a landslide – though as the new poll data below indicates, one shouldn’t rely too heavily on the reporting of some journalists who are running ahead of themselves, so giddy with excitement are they at the prospect of an Obama victory.

If Obama wins, America will have elected a president with a more radical background and a greater number of radical associates than anybody to have entered the White House in living memory.

However, my hunch is that in office a president Obama would disappoint his MoveOn.org and Daily Kos support base and form a centrist government. I say this not because Obama doesn’t have genuine radical leanings, but because as the astute politician that he is, his first priority will to be re-elected in 2012, and given the increasing lengths of presidential campaigns, he needs to strategize for re-election almost from his first day in office. If Obama does gravitate to the center, then he will disappoint his own support base more than he will disappoint moderates (among whom I include myself).

There is, however, a distinct possibility that Obama really would be the radical in office that many of his past and present associates would like him to be. That makes McCain a safer bet as president, since I can see no reason to doubt that in office he would act as the centrist he has always been.

For all his faults, McCain has a very solid set of opinions which (unlike Obama’s) have been properly scrutinized by the mainstream American media. Even though we can all see that Obama is highly eloquent, can be a great orator when addressing large crowds, and knows how to keep exceptionally calm, at least in public, we still don’t really know who he is.

 

STILL MUCH TO CONCERN SUPPORTERS OF ISRAEL

Certainly on questions concerning the Middle East, for sympathizers of Israel and for anyone seriously concerned about nuclear proliferation in the Muslim world, McCain is a much safer bet than Obama, who remains something of an unknown quantity.

The principal Republican being touted for office in an Obama administration, Sen. Chuck Hagel, who is now being tipped as a possible defense secretary, would prove disastrous for Israel if one judges by Hagel’s past record.

Hagel stands out among Republicans for taking positions not shared by the rest of his party, or indeed by moderate Democrats. He has consistently advocated anti-Israel measures. He vehemently opposed the surge in Iraq. He was one of only two senators to vote against renewing the 2001 Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, which passed 96-2 and helped deny Iran and Libya money that they would have spent on supporting terrorism or acquiring weapons of mass destruction. He was one of only four senators who voted against the 2003 Syria Accountability Act which condemned Syria for its support of terrorism and its occupation of Lebanon. And he was one of only four senators who voted against the 1998 Iran Missile Proliferation Sanctions Act, imposing sanctions on foreigners who help Iran’s missile program. (See more on Hagel here.) One might ask why Obama is so enamored with Hagel?

(In an interview recorded yesterday evening, Hamas’ chief political adviser in the Gaza Strip, Ahmed Yousef, told WABC Radio’s John Batchelor that Hamas was “hoping for an Obama victory,” and that he had confidence Obama would engage in the “right policy” toward Hamas.)

Obama is also said to admire General Jim Jones, the former NATO commander, and more recently Middle East peace envoy, whom many in Israel have been very unhappy with.

A much better – and bolder – choice would be for Obama to appoint John McCain as his defense secretary.

 

NEVER BEFORE HAVE THE MEDIA BEEN SO LOATH TO EXAMINE A CANDIDATE

Academics who study the media as neutral observers say that we are being subjected to the most biased media coverage that has ever disfigured an American election. Even though the campaign has dragged on for two years, and many millions of words have been written and broadcast, most major media have shied away from investigating the many troubling questions still surrounding Obama.

An increasing number of newspapers have now publicly and formally stated what has been obvious for some time: that they endorse Obama for president.

The 40th such major American paper to do so, in a gushing endorsement on Friday, was The Washington Post.

If Obama wins, it is surely essential that it should be in a fair way, not because most of the media have done their utmost to avoid asking questions they would have asked of any other candidate with Obama’s associations. The media seemed more interested in investigating who “Joe the plumber” is in a 24-hour-period last week than they have been in discovering who Barack Obama is over a two year campaign period.

The items below are designed to provide a counterbalance to what you hear in much of the media.

 

DON’T GET READY TO BOARD AIRFORCE ONE JUST YET

The polls that some Obama-supporting media have chosen to headline and highlight show Obama pulling well ahead to the point where it looks as though he may enjoy a landslide victory. However, some commentators say that this is (at least in part) primarily an attempt by those media to dishearten McCain supporters and make it appear that the election is all but over. There are indeed other polls from reliable organizations which suggest Obama shouldn’t be ordering new furniture for the White House quite yet.

Gallup’s traditional “likely voter model” poll released on Saturday (Oct. 18) shows McCain within only two points of Obama, well within the poll’s margin of error. The three-day sampling shows Obama leading 49 percent to 47 percent. Among registered voters, Obama leads 49 to 43 percent. Most importantly for McCain, Gallup shows twice as many undecided voters this year as in 2004. (By contrast to Gallup, a New York Times/CBS poll taken the same time showed Obama up 14 percentage points.)

***

OBAMA’S LEAD SLIPS TO 3 POINTS

Even more strikingly, in a new Reuters/C-SPAN/Zogby poll released yesterday (Sunday), Obama’s lead among likely voters is only by 48 to 45 percent, down 1 percentage point from Saturday. The four-day tracking poll has a margin of error of 2.9 points.

Pollster John Zogby said the numbers reflected a bump following McCain’s impressive appearance in the third and final presidential debate on Wednesday.

“For the first time in the polling McCain is up above 45 percent. There is no question something has happened,” Zogby said.

Zogby added that the Arizona senator appeared to have solidified his support with the Republican base – where 9 out of 10 voters now back him – and was also gaining ground among the independents who may play a decisive role in the November 4 election.

 

“STILL NOT QUALIFIED”

A recent Washington Post/ABC Poll found 45 percent of voters still don’t think Obama is qualified to be president, about the same number who doubted his qualifications in March.

The chief reason, they say, is that Obama has accomplished virtually nothing during the three years since he joined the U.S. Senate, other than run for president.

Only once in recent elections have a larger percentage of voters told pollsters that they believed a candidate lacked the necessary qualifications to be president – when they were asked about Michael Dukakis in 1988.

Not reported properly by many media, a group of over 100 leading economists have endorsed McCain because they say he has a better economic plan. “Barack Obama’s financial proposals run a high risk of throwing the U.S. into a deep recession,” they said in a letter sent to newspapers (though not published by most).

 

“OBAMA WILL SIT DOWN WITH AHMADINEJAD BUT NOT WITH THE RJC”

The Obama campaign has withdrawn from two debates with Jewish Republicans, and is trying to cancel all remaining debates in the Jewish community that include the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), The Jewish Journal reports. These include 29 scheduled events, in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York, Cleveland, and elsewhere.

RJC Executive Director Matt Brooks said: “Obama is refusing to have his representatives debate what his Middle East policies would actually look like. We find it a curious paradox that Obama would engage Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions, but the Obama campaign will not engage the RJC. Given how troubling Obama’s record is on Israel, I guess he’s afraid to have a fair debate.”

“The RJC is deeply troubled by this effort on the part of the Obama campaign to stifle and limit debate. More than anything the Jewish community values dialogue. Why is the Obama campaign afraid to have a candid conversation on issues of great concern to Jewish voters?”

A prominent member of the Jewish community in Los Angeles, where one of cancelled debates was due to be held this week, confirmed they would now only take a question and answer session with the Republican representative and called the decision by the Obama campaign to withdraw a “huge blunder.” (One Democratic source said Obama is confident he will win California in any event and doesn’t want to run the risk of his representatives answering hard questions about his likely Mideast policies which could then be published in media elsewhere in the U.S.)

According to polls, Obama may become only the second Democratic presidential candidate since the 1920s to receive less than 60 percent of the Jewish vote. President Carter in 1980 was the other.

 

OBAMA WILL END ZIONIST CONTROL OF AMERICA, DECLARES JESSE JACKSON

Rev. Jesse Jackson has been widely criticized for his remarks, made last week at a conference on international relations in France, that if elected president, Obama will “end decades of putting Israel first” and “Zionists will no longer control American policy.”

Among those condemning the comments were the traditionally liberal-leaning American Jewish Committee (AJC).

“Rev. Jackson’s remarks echo classic anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about Jewish power,” the AJC said in a press release. “As poll after poll has revealed, over a span of decades, the United States is deeply committed to Israel because the vast majority of Americans, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, identify with Israel as a proven friend and ally. It is this commonality of shared values and shared interests, and not Jackson’s conspiratorial notions of power, that unite Israel and America.”

The Obama campaign quickly sought to distance itself from Jackson’s remarks and reiterated that Obama would maintain America’s “close relationship” with Israel.

This seems to be the latest chapter in what appears to be a protracted falling-out between the two prominent Chicago African-American politicians. In July, Jackson created a controversy when he was caught saying of Obama, “I want to cut his nuts off,” in what he apparently thought was a private conversation.

In apologizing for the remarks about Obama, Jackson said his son has been a close friend of Obama for years, and Jackson’s daughter went to school with Obama’s wife Michelle. “I helped Barack start his career,” Jackson said.

At the same conference last week in France, Jackson admitted that American troops would likely stay in Iraq “for a very long time” under an Obama presidency.

McCain’s spokesman, Tucker Bounds, also reacted to Jackson’s comments, saying: “Literally, nobody knows what Barack Obama’s policies would be if he were elected president, but it’s very concerning that people believe he will not be a friend to Israel.”

Jackson’s sentiments almost exactly mirror those made by Obama national campaign co-chairman Gen. Tony McPeak in a 2003 newspaper interview when he blamed what he said was lack of progress in the Mideast on “people in New York City and Miami” (i.e. Jews).

 

OBAMA PLAYS THE RACE CARD

The following are extracts of Charles Krauthammer’s column on Friday. (The full version of this article is further down this dispatch.)

Let me get this straight. A couple of agitated yahoos in a rally of thousands yell something offensive and incendiary, and John McCain and Sarah Palin are not just guilty by association – with total strangers, mind you – but worse: guilty according to The New York Times of “race-baiting and xenophobia.”

But should you bring up Barack Obama’s real associations – 20 years with Jeremiah Wright, working on two foundations and distributing money with William Ayers, citing the raving Michael Pfleger as one who helps him keep his moral compass (Chicago Sun-Times, April 2004) and the long-standing relationship with the left-wing vote-fraud specialist ACORN – you have crossed the line into illegitimate guilt by association. Moreover, it is tinged with racism.

The fact that, when John McCain actually heard one of those nasty things said about Obama, he incurred the boos of his own crowd by insisting that Obama is “a decent person that you do not have to be scared (of) as president” makes no difference.

... What makes the charges against McCain especially revolting is that he has been scrupulous in eschewing the race card. He has gone far beyond what is right and necessary, refusing even to make an issue of Obama’s deep, self-declared connection with the race-baiting Jeremiah Wright.

... AGAINST THE CLINTONS TOO

... The reason Bill Clinton is sulking in his tent is because he feels that Obama surrogates succeeded in painting him as a racist. Clinton has many sins, but from his student days to his post-presidency, his commitment and sincerity in advancing the cause of African-Americans have been undeniable. If the man Toni Morrison called the first black president can be turned into a closet racist, then anyone can.

And Obama has shown no hesitation in doing so to McCain... What makes this all the more dismaying is that it comes from Barack Obama, who has consistently presented himself as a healer, a man of a new generation above and beyond race, the man who would turn the page on the guilt-tripping grievance politics of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. I once believed him.

***

Tom Gross adds:

It is worth reading Krauthammer’s column in full below, especially his expose of the absurd and vile attacks on McCain by New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, who have fallen over themselves to make completely unsubstantiated allegations about McCain.

Obama has helped encourage such attacks (and unlike McCain who has denounced fringe elements on the Republican side, hasn’t denounced them). This might give even the most ardent Obama supporter pause for thought about saintly their “candidate of change” really is.

 

JOE-THE-PLUMBER VETTED MORE THAN OBAMA-THE-PRESIDENTIAL-CANDIDATE

* “Within 24 hours the media gave us more information about Joe the plumber’s life than they’ve given us about Barack Obama’s life in the past two years”

The following is a blog post from the Clinton Dems for McCain website:

A Guy named Joe, who happens to be a plumber with ambitions for a bigger business, questioned and challenged a Guy named Barack, who happens to be running for President of the US/Leader of the Free World.

And within 24 hours The Media has given us more information about Joe’s life than they’ve given us about Barack’s life in the past 22 months!

Thanks to a diligent press corps, we now know about Joe’s professional licensing status, his income tax situation, his employment history, his domestic squabbles, his voting record, everything associated with his personal identity; his education... It’s probably been reported somewhere whether he wears boxers or briefs.

Thanks to a lazy press corps... We still don’t know what grades Obama made in college; how he got into Harvard; when he met Bill “the bomber” Ayers; when he stopped doing illegal drugs; his medical history; whether he still smokes cigarettes; the extent of his affiliation with socialist/communist organizations; why he’s no longer a licensed attorney; whether he lied on his Bar application; what passport he used to travel to Pakistan in 1981; whether he was or still is an Indonesian citizen; why his Kenyan grandmother insists he was born in Kenya; whether he was ever legally named Barry Soetoro or anything else besides Barack Obama; why he needed the help of a crook in Chicago to purchase his family home; where he was on Nov. 6 and 7, 1999; what the long-version of his birth certificate says; why he helped an anti-American, pro-Islamic candidate for Kenyan President against U.S. interests; why he listened to Rev. Wright’s sermons for 20 years; how many times he took his kids to a Rev. Wright sermon; what he actually did as chair of the Annenberg Challenge; the depth of his relationship with ACORN…

***

Writer Claudia Rosett asks, along similar lines:

In the interest of having an informed electorate, it would be far more valuable were the media teams working less frantically to dig up dirt on Joe, and a lot harder on filling in the gaps in the record of candidate Obama. Why won’t Obama release his Columbia transcripts? What exactly was he doing during those gaps in the bio?

How are we supposed to square the lavish praise of Obama’s intellectual powers and refined sensitivities with his professed failure during years of intimate acquaintance to notice the hate-speech of Rev. Wright? What is the real story with the ties to Bill Ayers, to Tony Rezko? What does that say about his judgment in choosing friends and advisers and associates?

Would Obama appoint similar pals to high office in Washington? Would he bring similarly blinkered perceptions to the job of making policy? Would his critics receive the kind of savaging just dished out to Joe? If there’s any chance that the answer is yes, then the drubbing of Joe the Plumber is a warning to us all.

 

ROLL UP, ROLL UP FOR THE GREAT OBAMA!

Columnist Kimberley Strassel writes in The Wall Street Journal:

And now, America, we introduce the Great Obama! The world’s most gifted political magician! A thing of wonder. A thing of awe. Just watch him defy politics, economics, even gravity! (And hold your applause until the end, please.)

To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don’t pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he “cut” zero? Abracadabra! It’s called a “refundable tax credit.” It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don’t. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as “welfare,” but please try not to ruin the show.

... And just watch the Great Obama perform a feat never yet managed in all history. He will create that enormous new government health program, spend billions to transform our energy economy, provide financial assistance to former Soviet satellites, invest in infrastructure, increase education spending, provide job training assistance, and give 95% of Americans a tax (ahem) cut – all without raising the deficit a single penny! And he’ll do it in the middle of a financial crisis. And with falling tax revenues! Voila!

Moving along to a little ventriloquism. Study his mouth carefully, folks: It looks like he’s saying “I’ll stop the special interests,” when in fact the words coming out are “Welcome to Washington, friends!”

Tada!

(The full version of this article is at the end of this dispatch.)

 

THE INDEFINABLE BARACK OBAMA

Leading columnist Mark Steyn writes (extracts only):

Traditionally, when an unknown politician emerges on the national scene, it’s a race to define him...

But Obama is defined by his indefinability. When I pointed out to [two young female students in Vermont I met who are enamored with Obama] that he lives in a swank pad in Chicago that was part of some shady real estate deal with a convicted fraudster (Tony Rezko), that he entrusted his daughters’ entire religious education to a neo-segregationist anti-American nut who preaches that the government created the AIDS virus to kill black people (Jeremiah Wright), that he attended fundraisers with a political patron who’s an unrepentant terrorist proud of plotting to blow up young ladies just like them at a dance at the Fort Dix military base (William Ayers), when I pointed all this out, they looked at me as if I’d brought a baseball bat to a croquet match. Mere earthbound politicians are defined by their real estate deals and sleazy buddies, but Obama is defined only by his vibe.”

... Gaze into the giant zero of the Obama logo, the hole in the star-spangled donut, the vast fathomless nullity that is the gaping keyhole to the door of utopia. To a sad shriveled Republican cynic, there’s nothing there but the wide open spaces of Obama’s blank resume. But a believer will see therein the healing of the planet and the receding of the oceans...

 

CNN EXPOSES OBAMA-LINKED VOTER REGISTRATION FRAUD

CNN has finally covered the claims of mass voter registration fraud by the militant pro-Obama group Acorn, which it says is responsible for thousands of fake registrations across America this year. In the key swing state of Philadelphia alone, CNN reports there are at least 1500 “obvious fraudulent registrations” and 8000 more which are definitely “problematic”.

Most other Obama-supporting mainstream media outlets have ignored or downplayed this important story.

In the primary elections alone, CNN reveals the Obama campaign gave $800,000 to Acorn for them to register votes, many fraudulent. (Some Hillary Clinton supporters are said to be considering legal action against Acorn.)

Acorn is now even registering dead people to vote for Obama in the key swing state Pennsylvania, according to CNN.

And here, importantly, is CNN on Acorn’s ties to Barack Obama.

Even though the FBI has opened an investigation into a likely a nationwide, coordinated voter-registration scam, many Obama-supporting media are refusing to tell their readers about it.

A New York Post investigation found that as many as 200,000 of the 660,000 voters registered this year, largely by Acorn, were suspicious.

***

HOW OBAMA HARASSED OTHER DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES IN CHICAGO IN THE 1990s

We shouldn’t be surprised. As far back as 1996, when Obama was elected to the Illinois state senate unopposed, this was no accident. He used every trick in the book to harass the four other candidates, including fellow Democrat and sitting senator Alice Palmer, and find ways to disqualify them, according to local Democrats in Chicago. There is a litany of other accusations of malpractice by Obama in Illinois in the 1990s, but it is very hard to find reporting on this in the mainstream media. (For a quick summary of some of the others, see this article from a British mid-market newspaper. )

***

ALL ACROSS AMERICA

The Wall Street Journal reports (but pro-Obama media ignores):

The Michigan Secretary of State told the press in September that Acorn had submitted “a sizeable number of duplicate and fraudulent applications.” Earlier this month, Nevada’s Democratic Secretary of State Ross Miller requested a raid on Acorn’s offices, following complaints of false names and fictional addresses (including the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys). Nevada’s Clark County Registrar of Voters Larry Lomax said he saw rampant fraud in 2,000 to 3,000 applications Acorn submitted weekly.

Officials in Ohio are investigating voter fraud connected with Acorn, and Florida’s Seminole County is withholding Acorn registrations that appear fraudulent. New Mexico, North Carolina and Missouri are looking into hundreds of dubious Acorn registrations. Wisconsin is investigating Acorn employees for, according to an election official, “making people up or registering people that were still in prison.”

Then there’s Lake County, Indiana, which has already found more than 2,100 bogus applications among the 5,000 Acorn dumped right before the deadline. “All the signatures looked exactly the same,” said Ruthann Hoagland, of the county election board. Bridgeport, Connecticut estimates about 20% of Acorn’s registrations were faulty. As of July, the city of Houston had rejected or put on hold about 40% of the 27,000 registration cards submitted by Acorn.

... During Obama’s tenure on the board of Chicago’s Woods Fund, that body funneled more than $200,000 to Acorn. More recently, the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an Acorn affiliate. The campaign initially told the Federal Election Commission this money was for “staging, sound, lighting.” It later admitted the cash was to get out the vote.

... The Justice Department needs to treat these fraud reports as something larger than a few local violators. The question is whether Acorn is systematically subverting U.S. election law – on the taxpayer’s dime.

 

OBAMA SWAMPING TV NETWORKS WITH ADS

Not only are most media blatantly in Obama’s court in their programming, but Obama is using an advertising campaign of unrivaled scale and complexity to out advertise John McCain nationwide in between programs too, by at least four to one.

The New York Times reports: “With advertisements running repeatedly day and night, on local stations and on the major broadcast networks, on niche cable networks and even on video games and his own dedicated satellite channels, Mr. Obama is now out-advertising Senator John McCain nationwide by a ratio of at least four to one. That difference is even larger in several closely contested states... Analysts say his campaign is on pace to surpass next week the record of $188 million in advertising spending in a general election.”

In one swing state, a BBC correspondent found that Obama has aired 1000 ads last week, whereas McCain had aired only 8.

On the evening of Oct. 29, less than a week before the election, Obama is planning to host a half-hour TV commercial on CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox, costing many millions of dollars.

(Barack Obama has paid Fox TV so much that they have even agreed to move the start time of the baseball world series game on Oct. 29 by about 15 minutes, so that Obama can have the main 8 – 8.30 pm primetime slot.)

The Wisconsin Advertising Project found that 61 percent of Obama’s general election advertisements so far had been devoted to attacking McCain. So much for Obama’s promise of “change” and “healing” and “a new kind of politics.”

 

OBAMA RENEGED ON CAMPAIGN FINANCE PLEDGE

The huge advertising gap has been made possible by Obama’s decision to opt out of the federal campaign finance system, which gives presidential nominees $84 million in public money and prohibits them from spending any amount above that from their party convention to Election Day. McCain – who is the real change candidate here – rejected the “big money” Obama has so eagerly and energetically courted and is participating in the new system.

Obama, who had previously promised to participate in it as well, is expected to announce that he raised more than $100 million in September, a figure that would shatter fund-raising records.

“This is uncharted territory,” Kenneth M. Goldstein, the director of the Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin, told The New York Times. “We’ve certainly seen heavy advertising battles before. But we’ve never seen in a presidential race one side having such a lopsided advantage.”

 

“KILL HIM” ALLEGATION CONCOCTED BY OBAMA-SUPPORTING JOURNALIST

The agents in charge of the Secret Service field office in Scranton, Pennsylvania have concluded that allegations that someone in the crowd yelled “kill him” when Barack Obama’s name was mentioned in a warm-up to last Tuesday’s Sarah Palin rally are unfounded.

The Scranton Times-Tribune first reported the alleged incident on its website last Tuesday, written by reporter David Singleton. News organizations including ABC, The Associated Press, MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, and many others reported the claim, with most attributing the allegations to the Times-Tribune story.

Abroad, media just headlined this accusation as fact without saying it was an allegation. Last week I was in France and Britain, and commentators on TV in both countries referred to the “fact” that “Republicans are shouting ‘kill him, kill him’ at rallies against Obama.”

Dozens of undercover secret service agents and law enforcement officers were in the crowd and not one heard the comment, nor did any witnesses they spoke to.

Upon questioning Singleton in order to find and arrest the perpetrator of the alleged death threat, the journalist admitted that he couldn’t give a description of the man because he didn’t see him but thought that he heard him.

 

30,000 FLORIDA FELONS ON VOTER ROLLS

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports that in the key swing state of Florida, more than 30,000 felons who should not be allowed to vote remain registered to cast ballots in this year’s presidential election. Of the Florida felons who registered with a party, reports the newspaper, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 2-to-1.

Florida is one of 10 states that restrict felons from voting even after they have served their time. Felons are removed from voter rolls by state and county elections officials after they have been convicted, and can be put back on the rolls only if they appeal for clemency to restore their voting rights.

 

“DEAR MR. OBAMA”

I include this not because I think it is a particularly good video, but because well over ten million people have had to go to the internet to watch this YouTube version, which is the only place where they can see it. It was made less than two months ago. In other words, virtually the entire American media are too partisan and close-minded to give voices to men like this.

 

SARAH PALIN APPEARS WITH TINA FEY ON SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE

On “Saturday Night Live” this past weekend, the Republican vice-presidential candidate was shown laughing as comedian Tina Fey performed impressions of her, before Palin took the stage herself to deliver the hit satire show’s “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night” opening line. Fey’s biting, often vicious, parodies have been credited with contributing to Palin’s declining popularity.

Backstage, Palin was approached by the left-wing Hollywood star Alec Baldwin. “This is the most important election in our nation’s history and you want her, our Tina, to go out there and stand with that horrible woman?” Baldwin said

When informed that he was speaking to the real Palin, Baldwin replied: “You are way hotter in person.” “I must say, your brother Stephen is my favorite Baldwin brother,” she responded.

The real Sarah Palin also shuffles to rap music in this clip on SNL, together with some Eskimos and a moose.

 

ACTOR DUVALL BLASTS PALIN CRITICS

Introducing Sarah Palin at a rally last week, actor Robert Duvall, star of The Godfather and other hit movies, blasted conservatives who have criticized the McCain-Palin ticket in recent days, calling conservative columnist George Will a “super-nerd” and former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson a “block of wood”.

“It bothers me that certain people in the Republican Party are attacking the McCain-Palin ticket, like super-nerd George... What’s his name?” Duvall asked, prompting a few attendees to laugh and shout out George Will. “George... George, I can’t even think. George Will,” Duvall said, referring to the Washington Post columnist who has been critical of Palin. Duvall, who has now introduced Palin at three events, said that upon meeting her he found her to be a “very impressive political leader.”

***

I attach two articles below.

-- Tom Gross