http://datrut.com/index.php/site Da Trut to us know-nothins en bob@imaginationsoft.com Copyright 2008 2008-11-06T05:19:39-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/yellow_journalism_of_the_moron_kind/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/yellow_journalism_of_the_moron_kind/#When:05:19:39Z Imagine a writer for a newspaper, say, the New York Times, and is more than deep within the bowels of a presidential campaign, say Republican, that this writer was instrumental in that campaign’s choice of running mate. From the New York Times. The disputes between the campaigns centered in large part on the Republican National Committee’s $150,000 wardrobe for Ms. Palin and her family, but also on what McCain advisers considered Ms. Palin’s lack of preparation for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric of CBS News and her refusal to take advice from Mr. McCain’s campaign. But behind those episodes may be a greater subtext: anger within the McCain camp that Ms. Palin harbored political ambitions beyond 2008. As late as Tuesday night, a McCain adviser said, Ms. Palin was pushing to deliver her own speech just before Mr. McCain’s concession speech, even though vice-presidential nominees do not traditionally speak on election night. But Ms. Palin met up with Mr. McCain with text in hand. She was told no by Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, and Steve Schmidt, Mr. McCain’s top strategist. On Wednesday, two top McCain campaign advisers said that the clothing purchases for Ms. Palin and her family were a particular source of outrage for them. As they portrayed it, Ms. Palin had been advised by Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain aide, that she should buy three new suits for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September and three additional suits for the fall campaign. The budget for the clothes was anticipated to be from $20,000 to $25,000, the officials said. Instead, in a public relations debacle undermining Ms. Palin’s image as an everywoman “hockey mom,” bills came in to the Republican National Committee for about $150,000, including charges of $75,062 at Neiman Marcus and $49,425 at Saks Fifth Avenue. The bills included clothing for Ms. Palin’s family and purchases of shoes, luggage and jewelry, the advisers said. The advisers described the McCain campaign as incredulous about the shopping spree and said that Republican National Committee lawyers would likely go to Alaska to conduct an inventory and try to account for all that was spent. Ms. Palin has defended her wardrobe as the idea of the Republican National Committee and said that she would give it back. “Those clothes, they are not my property,” she said. “Just like the lighting and the staging and everything else that the R.N.C. purchased.” Advisers in the McCain campaign, in suggesting that Palin advisers had been leaking damaging information about the McCain campaign to the news media, said they were particularly suspicious of Randy Scheunemann, Mr. McCain’s top foreign policy aide who had a central role in preparing Ms. Palin for the vice-presidential debate. As a result, two senior members of the McCain campaign said on Wednesday that Mr. Scheunemann had been fired from the campaign in its final days. But Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager, and Mr. Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, said on Wednesday that Mr. Scheunemann had in fact not been dismissed. Mr. Scheunemann, who picked up the phone in his office at McCain campaign headquarters on Wednesday afternoon, responded that “anybody who says I was fired is either lying or delusional or a whack job.” Mr. Scheunemann was referring to widely disseminated criticism by Mr. McCain’s advisers in the final days of the campaign that Ms. Palin, as first reported in Politico, was a “whack job.” Whatever the permutations, the advisers said they strongly believed that Mr. Scheunemann was disclosing, as one put it, “a constant stream of poison” to William Kristol, the editor of the conservative Weekly Standard and a columnist for The New York Times. ... I do not understand how the New York Times can keep a public commentator on payroll when he is working for the campaign for whom he is writing supposed unvarnished commentary. No doubt the McCain campaign should be shot for elevating Sarah Palin based on little else than a letter of recommendation from Bill Kristol. Yet Krisol has been using his perch at the Weekly Standard, Fox News (both owned by Rupert Murdock) and recently the New York Times to foist upon America an incompetent holy roller in order for him and his necon ilk to manipulate, much like the disastrous Bush administration, toward his his historically proven abominations he calls strategic policies. From Fox News: There was great concern in the McCain campaign that Sarah Palin lacked the degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, and a heartbeat away from the presidency. We’re told by folks that she didn’t know what countries were in NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, that being Canada, the US, and Mexico. We’re told that she didn’t understand that Africa was a continent rather than a country just in itself. A whole host of questions that caused serious problems about her knowledgeability. She got very angry at staff, thought that she was mishandled, was particularly angry about the way the Katie Couric interview went. She didn’t accept preparation for that interview when the aides say that that was part of the problem. And that there were times where she was hard to control emotionally. There’s talk of temper tantrums at bad news clippings For Kristol and friends, the fact that Palin could not understand that Africa is a continent is precisely the point—they need blithering idiots to front for their disastrous policies. 2008 Presidental Contest, John McCain 2008-11-06T05:19:39-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/limbaugh_on_the_ropes/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/limbaugh_on_the_ropes/#When:16:44:48Z Rush Limbaugh on the coming Republican Debacle.When I saw the Weld thing today I smiled and I fired off a note to all my buddies and I said, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! How can this be? How can this be?  This is the kind of guy that our candidate was supposed to be attracting, and we were supposed to be getting all these moderates from the Democrat Party,” and we will, by the way. We’re going to get some rank and file, average American Democrats that are going to vote for McCain.  But these hoity-toity bourgeoisie… Well, they’re not the bourgeoisie, but… Well, they are in a sense. They’re following their own self-interests, so I say fine. They have just admitted that Republican Party “big tent” philosophy didn’t work. It was their philosophy; it was their idea. These are the people, once they steered the party to where it is, they are the ones that abandoned it. Politics, Republicans 2008-10-27T16:44:48-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/bling_sarah/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/bling_sarah/#When:02:55:36Z From Mike MurphyClothes for Gov. Palin? $150,000. Time machine to go back two months to late August and ask what the Hell were Schmidt and Davis thinking when they cooked up this idea and sold it to McCain?  Priceless. 2008 Presidental Contest, John McCain 2008-10-23T02:55:36-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/rnc_bailing_on_mccain/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/rnc_bailing_on_mccain/#When:02:48:50Z After financing Palin’s wardrobe, the RNC is shrinking McCain’s advertising budget in swing states.The official version is the combination RNC-McCain advertisements are muddying the ticket’s message by requiring information about local races.Crooked Timber has another theory.[W]hile mixed messages are a significant problem, I (as an admitted naif on these issues) would have thought that getting completely swamped by your opponent’s advertising is a rather bigger one. Isn’t a more plausible interpretation of this decision that the RNC are finally pulling the plug on their subsidization of the McCain campaign, and the McCain folks are trying to put the best face that they can on it? 2008 Presidental Contest, John McCain 2008-10-23T02:48:50-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/once_on_top_of_the_world/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/once_on_top_of_the_world/#When:02:15:16Z I was not too long ago when the Decider and his Merlin pined for a thirty-year Republican realignment.Today poor Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell is tied with his democratic opponent.In two weeks, early election results showing McConnell going down in Kentucky will signal a Democratic landslide.Too bad it may take the destruction of the nation to get rid of these clowns. Politics, Republicans 2008-10-22T02:15:16-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/ken_adelman_votes_hope/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/ken_adelman_votes_hope/#When:01:22:11Z Colon Powell hopping on the Obama bandwagon, I can understand. But lifelong conservative Republican Ken Adelman? Wow. What made up his mind?The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.  That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick. Oh. 2008 Presidental Contest, Barack Obama 2008-10-21T01:22:11-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/fn_hedge_funds/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/fn_hedge_funds/#When:18:42:19Z Retiring hedge fund manager Andrew Lahde gives thanks to the Ivy League morons who made his wealth possible.[A] hedge fund manager who was also closing up shop (a $300 million fund), was quoted as saying, “What I have learned about the hedge fund business is that I hate it.” I could not agree more with that statement. I was in this game for the money. The low hanging fruit, i.e. idiots whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking. These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people stupid enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America. Mr. Lahde is also for hemp as an alternative for, well, everything. Culture, Economy 2008-10-20T18:42:19-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/obama_the_marketer/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/obama_the_marketer/#When:18:27:17Z Advertising Age’s Marketer of the Year is none other than Barack Obama.  Runner up: Steve Jobs. Politics, 2008 Presidental Contest, Barack Obama 2008-10-20T18:27:17-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/the_debate_in_1000_words/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/the_debate_in_1000_words/#When:14:34:24Z Politics, 2008 Presidental Contest, John McCain, Barack Obama 2008-10-16T14:34:24-05:00 http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/mccain_theyre_laughing_at_you/ http://www.datrut.com/index.php/site/mccain_theyre_laughing_at_you/#When:14:13:02Z With the non-stop blinking, 20-some-odd references to the 250k annual salaried “Joe the Plumber,” and the palpable disdain for Obama, the independent focus groups are laughing at you.In politics it is generally not considered a good sign when voters are laughing at you, not with you. And by the end of the third and last presidential debate, the undecided voters who had gathered in Denver for Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg’s focus group were “audibly snickering” at John McCain’s grimaces, eye-bulging, and repeated references to “Joe the Plumber.” The group of 50 uncommitted voters should have at least been receptive to McCain—Republicans and Independents outnumbered Democrats in the group by almost 4 to 1, and they started the evening with much warmer responses to McCain than to his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. But by the time it was all over, so few of them had declared their support for McCain that there weren’t enough for Greenberg to separate them into a post-debate focus group. Meanwhile, the Obama supporters had to assemble in two different rooms to keep their discussion groups manageable. 2008 Presidental Contest, John McCain 2008-10-16T14:13:02-05:00