Month: September 2008

Does he really believe that postponing the debate and suspending his campaign will calm the markets? Or is his entire campaign collapsing?

Now he wants to postpone Friday’s debate.

Howie Kurtz’s piece in the Washington Post today reprints two emails I sent McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb privately last week. Kurtz got the emails because Goldfarb sent them to him, after sending them to other reporters to goad them into doing a story on me. Kurtz published my confidential emails to Goldfarb, having been contacted by Goldfarb to write the story.

I should reiterate two critical things: I have never claimed that Trig Palin is not Sarah Palin’s biological son. In fact, I have gone to enormous lengths never to say that, going silent for two days to figure it out and decided to leave it alone. Why? Because I had no proof of anything, only questions. Since then, I have raised legitimate policy questions about what is undisputed in the public record, but I have not made any statements of fact I do not know to be true. That’s my job. But I also expected the McCain campaign to do their job and at some point to provide evidence or a public statement setting the record straight, which they could persumably very easily do. So I waited three weeks, watched two interviews, scanned Nexis and Google for any confirmation of actual evidence, and then privately asked Goldfarb and two other people I know and like in the McCain campaign to confirm the evidentiary truth on the record. I did not raise this issue in public. I asked a question in private. But it has now been made public by Goldfarb and Kurtz, and since they are now in the public domain, here are the two emails I sent Goldfarb and he got Kurtz to reprint:

"I’m very sorry to say, it’s come to this: can you confirm on the record that Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s biological son? . . . Since this is a crazy idea, it should be easy for you or someone to let me know, the most popular one-man political blog site in the world, what the truth is."

""I asked a simple question akin to asking whether you can confirm that the sky is blue. Here’s the question in case it got lost: can you confirm on the record that Trig Palin is Sarah Palin’s biological son? Can I please get a response of some sort, even if it is that you will not respond?"

I got no response, so I let it drop. Like everyone else, I have been trying to get some answers to some factual questions from the McCain campaign but they refuse to provide them. But for the McCain campaign to go to these lengths, violating core confidentiality of private good-faith questions, is something that has never happened to me before in journalism. I am also amazed that a fellow journalist would publish such emails in full. But since this is now all in the open, you deserve to know what your blogger has been trying to do in private for three weeks: just get a factual answer to a factual question on the record.

They won’t. They cannot take the time to confirm on the record that Trig is Sarah’s biological son, but they will try to smear the person asking. What does that tell you?

A gorgeous new Hovis bread ad from Britain, depicting the last 122 years of British history:

“John McCain’s campaign manager and Freddie Mac had what amounts to a secret half a million dollar lay-a-way plan. For almost three years and as late as last month, Freddie Mac made secret, monthly payments of $15,000 to Rick Davis’s firm for a no-show job, apparently in exchange for providing special access to a future McCain White House,” – David Donnelly, director of Campaign Money Watch.

You can fool some of the people …:

The new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll will be released at 6:30 pm ET, but here’s an early look at one set of numbers: Forty-nine percent say that Palin is unqualified to be president if the need arises, compared with 40 percent who say she’s qualified. By contrast, 64 percent believe Biden is qualified to be president, versus just 21 percent who disagree.

You think we’re fools? Krugman makes a good point:

The two striking things about the Paulson push since last Friday have been (1) demands for complete discretion, with zero accountability and (2) a complete refusal to explain the theory of the case — to explain why this thing is supposed to work, so that we can have an open discussion of whether he’s right.

It was exactly this pattern before the Iraq war and remains exactly this pattern with the Palin nomination. No transparency, near-dictatorial powers, brow-beating of the press and a point-blank refusal to have an open discussion.

I trusted them once. Never ever again. Release Palin’s full medical records now.

Now he’s disputing the public polls. This campaign is in total meltdown.

Beneath all the blather and rhetoric, the McCain camp cannot deny the facts. This is psychotic behavior.

Since Sarah Palin was selected for the vice-presidential nomination, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has given more press conferences than she has. That’s the country John McCain believes in.