Charlie Gibson, Probably Innocently, Distorts Palin’s Prayer

This is a distortion of what Palin said. Palin didn’t say the war was a task from God. She said: pray that the war is a task from God. She didn’t say the war was God’s plan. She said: pray that it is God’s plan. In other words, pray that we are carrying out God’s will.

Here’s the accurate quotation, from the Huffington Post, complete with a clip:

“Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God,” she exhorted the congregants. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God’s plan.”

Just as Palin said in her interview with Gibson, Palin is clearly praying that the U.S. plan is God’s plan. In other words, as she said to Gibson: “let us pray that we are on God’s side.”

L.A. Times Writer Botches Palin Prayer, Follows Gibson’s Example and Sends the Embarrassing Passage Down the Memory Hole

The latest Sarah Palin smear from the Left: teen molester

The below is from the Mark Levin Show site

Obama said on ABC’s This Week Sunday (September 7, 2008) “I had to sign up for Selective Service when I graduated from high school.”

However, upon further research, Mark, with the help of a caller, revealed that Obama graduated in 1979 and “the registration requirement was suspended in April 1975. It was resumed again in 1980 by President Carter in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.” (Info from the official government selective service website below) Thus, Obama’s statement that he ‘had to sign up’ is not true.

Background of Selective Service

Video of Obama lying

Listen to Mark expose Obama lying about selective service.

Did Gibson have a double standard for Palin? Update: ABC’s edits

In the days leading up to Charles Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin, many demanded that he ask her tough questions on foreign policy and reform.  Certainly that is what journalists should do with all of our elected officials and political candidates, but it seems that Gibson doesn’t always meet this standard.  Two bloggers have already provided evidence that Gibson treated Democrats much differently.

First, the Anchoress has a list of questions posed by Gibson to Barack Obama three months ago, who has arguably less experience on foreign policy than Palin and no executive experience at all:

Obama interview:

How does it feel to break a glass ceiling?
How does it feel to “win”?
How does your family feel about your “winning” breaking a glass ceiling?
Who will be your VP?
Should you choose Hillary Clinton as VP?
Will you accept public finance?
What issues is your campaign about?
Will you visit Iraq?
Will you debate McCain at a town hall?
What did you think of your competitor’s [Clinton] speech?

Palin interview:
Do you have enough qualifications for the job you’re seeking? Specifically have you visited foreign countries and met foreign leaders?
Aren’t you conceited to be seeking this high level job?
Questions about foreign policy
-territorial integrity of Georgia
-allowing Georgia and Ukraine to be members of NATO
-NATO treaty
-Iranian nuclear threat
-what to do if Israel attacks Iran
-Al Qaeda motivations
-the Bush Doctrine
-attacking terrorists harbored by Pakistan
Is America fighting a holy war? [misquoted Palin]

Newsbusters, meanwhile, has Gibson’s interview with John Edwards in 2004 after being selected as John Kerry’s running mate.  Edwards had less than a full term in the Senate as his entire political background, and no foreign-policy, military, or executive experience at all.  Yet Gibson didn’t press Edwards on these points at all.  In fact, the entire interview consisted of a hard-hitting interrogation … on how mean Republicans are

Update: Newsbusters takes a look at the full transcript and finds some interesting answers left out of the broadcast portions of the interview.

The real Bush Doctrine

Rarely has a gotcha boomeranged so badly against the one who wielded it.  Instead of having a moment of triumph, Gibson made himself look petty, snobbish, and badly informed.  The question revealed a rube, all right, but not the one ABC expected.

Update: The New York Times’ military correspondent, Michael Gordon, concurs — and notes that Gibson either didn’t know enough about the subject to define it in his question or intended it as a “gotcha” all along.

AP poll: Obama losing on experience to … Sarah Palin

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As one International Atomic Energy Agency official said, if Iran's nuclear ambitions are only peaceful, why would they have moved the uranium? Don't expect answers later this month when IAEA governors meet to talk about Iran's nuclear program. The IAEA, an arm of the United Nations, is as feckless as the U.N. itself.

The most likely entity to take action against Iran is Israel, which helped the world avert an inevitable crisis when it disabled Iraq's Osirak atomic reactor with an air strike in 1981. The bold raid justly derailed Saddam Hussein's goal of developing nuclear weapons.

"Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what...

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There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration — and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today.

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, he grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

Yes, Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know — while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the phenom who presumes to play on their stage.

Why can’t McCain e-mail? Boston Globe explained it in 2000; Update: So did Forbes

Open thread: Palin on ABC; Update: Gibson distorts Palin’s Iraq prayer; Update: Video of Iraq prayer comments included in segment

Totally untrue, but that’s what he gets for relying on the Associated Press, which took the liberty of bowdlerizing her quote mid-sentence in order to make it fit the narrative they were trying to build of her as some fundie who thinks she can read God’s mind. Here’s my post on the subject from last Thursday. Read it and see just how egregious the distortion here is.

Update: They’re also exaggerating what she said with their teaser, which makes it sound like she wants to unilaterally guarantee the security of Russian satellites. Read the excerpt linked above and you’ll see she simply means admitting Georgia and Ukraine to NATO and bringing them under the aegis of the all-for-one principle, which is McCain’s position. In the meantime, here’s what she says we should do: “It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.”

Whoopi to McCain: “Do I have to be worried about becoming a slave again?”

If Goldberg -- who in the past has shown clear ignorance about the Constitution -- would actually read the Constitution, she would know a strict constructionist would not return America to slavery. The 13^th Amendment to the Constitution states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except for punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Initially Senator McCain ignored Goldberg's question, but Whoopi expressed her enslavement anxiety again adding "there are certain things in the Constitution that you had to change." The "View" co-host should know that, unlike the legalization of abortion, slavery was abolished through a constitutional amendment, not a Supreme Court decision.

Another of our youngest presidents, Bill Clinton, was 46 when sworn in and became the first Democrat since FDR to serve two terms.

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Many people felt Carter was a good man who worked hard and meant well. But he was naive and incompetent in handling the enormous burdens and complex challenges of being president.

He wrongly believed Americans had an "inordinate fear of communism," so he lifted travel bans to Cuba, North Vietnam and Cambodia and pardoned draft evaders. He also stopped B-1 bomber production and gave away our strategically located Panama Canal.

His most damaging miscalculation was the withdrawal of U.S. support for the Shah of Iran, a strong and longtime military ally. Carter objected to the Shah's alleged mistreatment of imprisoned Soviet spies who were working to overthrow Iran's government. He thought the exiled Ayatollah Khomeini, being a religious man, would make a fairer leader.

On the domestic side, Carter gave us inflation of 15%, the highest in 34 years; interest rates of 21%, the highest in 115 years; and a severe energy crisis with lines around the block at gas stations nationwide.

In 1977, Carter, along with a Democrat Congress, created a worthy project with noble intentions — the Community Reinvestment Act. Over strong industry objections, it mandated that all banks meet the credit needs of their entire communities.

In 1995, President Clinton imposed even stronger regulations and performance tests that coerced banks to substantially increase loans to low-income, poverty-area borrowers or face fines or possible restrictions on expansion. These revisions allowed for securitization of CRA loans containing subprime mortgages.

By 1997, good loans were bundled with poor ones and sold as prime packages to institutions here and abroad. That shifted risk from the loan originators, freeing banks to begin pyramiding and make more of these profitable subprime products.

Under two young, well-intended presidents, therefore, big-government plans and mandates played a significant role in the current subprime mortgage mess and its catastrophic consequences for the U.S. and international economies.

Hardest-hit by the mortgage foreclosures have been the citizens that Democrats always claim to help most — inner-city residents who fell victim to low or no down payment schemes, unexpected adjustable rates, deceptive loan applications and commission-hungry salespeople.

Now we're having to bail out at huge cost Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the very agencies that were supposed to stabilize the system. In time, this should improve the situation. But the party of Carter and Clinton that midwifed our mortgage mess now wants to be trusted to take over and have the government run our entire system of health care!