NEWSWEEK has also learned that Palin’s shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain’s top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicolle Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family—clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus. According to two knowledgeable sources, a vast majority of the clothes were bought by a wealthy donor, who was shocked when he got the bill. Palin also used low-level staffers to buy some of the clothes on their credit cards. The McCain campaign found out last week when the aides sought reimbursement. One aide estimated that she spent “tens of thousands” more than the reported $150,000, and that $20,000 to $40,000 went to buy clothes for her husband. Some articles of clothing have apparently been lost. An angry aide characterized the shopping spree as “Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast,” and said the truth will eventually come out when the Republican Party audits its books.
A Palin aide said: “Governor Palin was not directing staffers to put anything on their personal credit cards, and anything that staffers put on their credit cards has been reimbursed, like an expense. Nasty and false accusations following a defeat say more about the person who made them than they do about Governor Palin.”
McCain himself rarely spoke to Palin during the campaign, and aides kept him in the dark about the details of her spending on clothes because they were sure he would be offended. Palin asked to speak along with McCain at his Arizona concession speech Tuesday night, but campaign strategist Steve Schmidt vetoed the request.
Browsing Posts in Government
Over at TalkingPointMemo there is a moving blog entry by eastside93 detailing his decision not to vote for Barack Obama yesterday.
I didn’t vote. Not for President, anyway.
Oh, I went to the voting booth. I signed, was given my stub, and was walked over to a voting machine. I cast votes for statewide races and a state referendum on water and sewer improvements.
I stood there, and I thought about all of these people, who influenced my life so greatly. But I didn’t vote for who would be the 44th President of the United States.
When my ballot was complete, except for the top line, I finally decided who I was going to vote for – and then decided to let him vote for me. I reached down, picked him up, and told him to find Obama’s name on the screen and touch it.
And so it came to pass that Alexander Reed, age 5, read the voting screen, found the right candidate, touched his name, and actually cast a vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
Oh, the vote will be recorded as mine. But I didn’t cast it.
Then again, the person who actually pressed the Obama box and the red “vote” button was the person I was really voting for all along.
The son of Muslim father and an atheist mother will be President of the United States.
Beautifully American…
Go vote! You will do this now!
No, I ‘m not dead yet, just crazy busy at work and helping the wife through nursing school. But I saw this quote from McCain last year and had to post it.
“I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I’ve been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism. I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time,” – Senator John McCain, October, 2007.
From a Republican Fox News debate as recorded in the New York Times , via Andrew Sullivan
Hopefully, we’ll be telling our grandkids about this one.
Follow the link for the full text…
I haven’t written in awhile but the kids are gone and the wife is asleep so I thought I’d mention this story that’s probably going to get buried since it released over the weekend.
Another one of Bush’s top people has resigned after being linked with a DC prostitution service. This time it is Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias, 2nd in the State Department to only Condi Rice. Hypocrisy is very amusing. Think Progress pointed out that not only was he a member of the sex-is-the-devil party in general, he was a powerful force behind the abstinence-only program this administration has promoted to fight the spread of AIDS in Africa. From the above link (a 2004 story)
Tobias said that promoting abstinence and monogamy are “far more effective” than distributing condoms for preventing the spread of HIV, according to Agence France-Presse. “Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective,” Tobias said, adding, “It’s been the principal prevention device for the last 20 years, and I think one needs only to look at what’s happening with the infection rates in the world to recognize that has not been working.”
[...]
Tobias added, “The message to young people in the schools is not either ‘Be abstinent or here are condoms, take your pick.’ It is a message of ‘Be abstinent.’ Delaying sexual activity is a means of eliminating the risk of infection.”
Obviously due to this brilliance (first mentioned here):
From the Financial Times:
For three years after the invasion of Iraq, it was difficult to drive more than a few miles through middle America without seeing a car displaying a magnetic yellow ribbon.
The magnets, bearing the slogan “Support Our Troops”, became a symbol of patriotism for millions of US motorists.
But as support for the war fades, demand for yellow ribbons has collapsed.
Magnet America, the largest manufacturer of the product, has seen sales fall from a peak of 1.2m in August 2004 to about 4,000 a month and now has an unsold stockpile of about 1m magnets.
[..]
Some critics have condemned the magnets as a cheap and superficial way to honour the armed forces and highlighted the irony of placing them on gas-guzzling vehicles that deepen the US’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil.
I’m sure by some critics they meant the Spankers. As an aside, the wife and I had a chance to go see the Asylum Street Spankers in St. Louis a few weeks ago and they were greatness live.
