I think I can understand the logic that went into Palin.

She's a big hit with the Bill Kristol set, because she's young, attractive, well-spoken, has a great biography, she's not an old white man, and she's a hardline neoconservative ideologue.

She's a Karl Rove style pick with a twist -- she'll comfort the people who're devastated that Bush can't just stay President forever, plus they think she has a chance to drive a wedge into the (in their mind) deeply divided Democratic party over women's issues.

They also believe that Hillary won't come out and hit Palin with a chainsaw over issues, because they're absolutely convinced that Hillary wants Obama to lose.

So the bullet points they gain are:

• Energize the "base" of evangelicals, and social conservatives
  
• Get a press buzz to focus on this "Fresh new face", to combat Obama on that front.
  
• Appeal to socially conservative women who want a woman in the White House
  
• Be able to say "see, we're not a bunch of sexists and racists after all"
  

What they lose is:

• The ability to hammer home Obama as not being experienced enough (Palin's resume is thinner than Obama's)
  
• The ability to reinforce the importance of National Security (since Palin has 0 experience with that)
  

That has me a little concerned, because in my analysis that means that the McCain campaign is going to totally detach from issues that matter (like experience), and go into total smear-merchant mode.

They've already made the shift, since there's now a spate of ads talking about William Ayers running here in Ohio, joining the ads that just flat out lie about Obama's tax plan (saying he'll raise your taxes if you make more than $42,000, which isn't true).

I expect the RNC convention to spend the entire time driving home baseless smears about patriotism, muslim, Wright, Ayers, and maybe we'll get to hear about the guy who claimed he had gay sex with Obama from the mouths of "serious" people.

I also expect that most of the positive stuff will focus on Palin's biography, and McCain's record as a P.O.W., and only Lieberman will talk about the bipartisan stuff.

I don't know if it'll work, but that's my prediction as an armchair strategist.

Have you ever noticed how RED the frames and background of these fox episodes are!? ... looks so devilishly like hell! Is it just BillY the KristoL, or is it just me?

Bill Kristol can shampoo my crotch.

Kristol is wrong ~90% of the time.

Therefor I am going with the odds on this one.

(p.s. Powell did NOT lie. He was given CIA and military information that he assumed was accurate and which he then presented. A significant part of the information relating to 'weapons of mass destruction' and a relationship between Saddam and Bin Laden we now know came from a single detained subject who was saying whatever his captures wanted to hear to avoid continued 'intense interrogation' techniques... Powell did not know this.)

Maybe Kristol thinks the mental image of two prominent black men standing next to each other would make FOX viewership nervous.

Looks like Bill Kristol is speaking out of his arse (again).

http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/08/colin_powell_spokesperson_kris.php

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
You have to look at the after math, won't know till this is over. Being that Russia is knocking on their capital door, I would tend to believe the US side of the story, but that isn't clear yet.


I'm the exact opposite.

Any time you have people like William Kristol wagging their fingers at Russia, you can bet money that Russia is probably in the right.

Iran hasn't done anything wrong.

It seems that the deciders in Israel, and their toady supporters here in the USA (Kristol, Bolton, 90% of the MSM), actually think that it's Israel's right to strike Iran, but not Iran's right to retaliate.

and since i'm a fair-and-balanced kind of guy, here is Bill Kristol's response on the issue:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Give-President-benefit-of-the-doubt-on-spying-says-asshole

Big surprise from the Neo-Con Bill Kristol

^well, what do you expect - he is a politician afterall. but at least he's less likely to start another war

More here about Kristol and Iran
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/22/kristol-bush-iran/

There's no such thing as a "radical" or "lunatic" left. it doesn't exist. He made it up.

I've thought for a long time now that O'Reilly and others like him (Bill Kristol, Chris Matthews, etc.) fabricate ways of contradicting reasonable arguments so that ignorance individuals will have fodder with which to remain ignorant, complacent, and unchanging. The bad news is that it seems to be working. The good news is that it is inherently a loser's strategy, because it functions on a limited supply of information, and thus prone to self-destruction.

Liberals dominate the media....this has been announced by Rush Limbaugh. And Thomas Sowell. And Ann Coulter. And Rich Lowry. And Bill O'Reilly. And William Safire. And Robert Novak. And William F. Buckley, Jr. And George Will.

And John Gibson. And Michelle Malkin. And David Brooks. And Tony Snow. And Tony Blankely. And Fred Barnes. And Britt Hume. And Larry Kudlow. And Sean Hannity. And David Horowitz. And William Kristol. And Hugh Hewitt.

And Oliver North. And Joe Scarborough. And Pat Buchanan. And John McLaughlin. And Cal Thomas. And Joe Klein. And James Kilpatrick. And Tucker Carlson. And Deroy Murdock. And Michael Savage. And Charles Krauthammer. And Stephen Moore. And Alan Keyes.

And Gary Bauer. And Mort Kondracke. And Andrew Sullivan. And Nicholas von Hoffman. And Neil Cavuto. And Matt Drudge. And Mike Rosen. And Dave Kopel. And John Caldara.

The mainstream media in this country are dominated by liberals. Look at how they all gave Bill Clinton a pass on the whole Monica Lewsinsky affair. Remember? It was never in the news. We never heard any of the salacious details.

Thomas Friedman is a globalization nazi. Compare him to Bill Kristol.