evanmorris.com
From the daily archives: Friday, October 31, 2008
Sarah Palin believes that media criticism of what she says in public is an abridgement of her constitutional rights under the First Amendment. No, really:
In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by “attacks” from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.
Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama’s associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate’s free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
“If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,” Palin told host Chris Plante, “then I don’t know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media.”
Political Radar: Palin Fears Media Threaten Her First Amendment Rights.
We keep hearing Republican flacks proclaiming that she is a “quick study” and actually quite sharp.
Uh, no. She’s a friggin’ imbecile who is not only unfit to be Vice President, but unfit to be Governor of Alaska and unfit to be mayor of Wasilla. School board member I could see — I’ve met a lot of imbeciles on school boards.
I could swear it says “Beware Palin Antichrist” and something about Gomorrah.
As I said when this story started, this “bailout” is nothing less than pure theft, the largest in human history, and nearly everything you have heard about it from the mass media is, as Naomi Klein explains, utter bullshit:
… When the Bush administration announced it would be injecting $250bn into US banks in exchange for equity, the plan was widely referred to as “partial nationalisation” – a radical measure required to get banks lending again. Henry Paulson, the treasury secretary, had seen the light, we were told, and was following the lead of Gordon Brown.
In fact, there has been no nationalisation, partial or otherwise. American taxpayers have gained no meaningful control over the banks, which is why the banks are free to spend the new money as they wish. At Morgan Stanley, it looks as if much of the windfall will cover this year’s bonuses. Citigroup has been hinting it will use its $25bn buying other banks, while John Thain, the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, told analysts: “At least for the next quarter, it’s just going to be a cushion.” The US government, meanwhile, is reduced to pleading with the banks that they at least spend a portion of the taxpayer windfall for loans – officially, the reason for the entire programme.
What, then, is the real purpose of the bail-out? My fear is this rush of dealmaking is something much more ambitious than a one-off gift to big business: that the Bush version of “partial nationalisation” is rigged to turn the US treasury into a bottomless cash machine for the banks for years to come.
How do you say “bite the wax tadpole” in Welsh?
When officials asked for the Welsh translation of a road sign, they thought the reply was what they needed.
Unfortunately, the e-mail response to Swansea council said in Welsh: “I am not in the office at the moment. Please send any work to be translated”.
So that was what went up under the English version which barred lorries from a road near a supermarket.
“When they’re proofing signs, they should really use someone who speaks Welsh,” said journalist Dylan Iorwerth.
more: BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | E-mail error ends up on road sign
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