Princess Sarah and the Horse$hit Whisperer

From CNN’s Jack Cafferty
There is a reason the McCain campaign keeps Governor Sarah Palin away from the press.

This is a direct excerpt from Katie Couric’s One-On-One interview with Sarah Palin, which aired Wednesday on CBS.

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? … Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions.

If McCain wins, this woman will be a 72-year-old heartbeat away from being president of the United States.

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Foreign Affairs are Foreign to Princess Sarah

From The New York Times:

Her first interview, with the ABC News anchor Charles Gibson, was too hard. The second, with Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel, was too soft. The third, however, did not turn out to be just right for Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

On the “CBS Evening News” on Thursday, Katie Couric asked Ms. Palin, Senator John McCain’s running mate, what she meant when she cited Alaska’s proximity to Russia as foreign affairs experience.

…snip…

“That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land — boundary that we have with — Canada,” she replied.

…snip…

Ms. Couric pressed her again to explain the geographic point. “Well, it certainly does,” Ms. Palin said, “because our, our next-door neighbors are foreign countries, they’re in the state that I am the executive of.”

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Lipstick Bungle

Kids, didya see the Katie Couric’s big interview of Princess Sarah? Sarah was fully prepared….but for different questions.

Katie asked about Rick Davis, Captain Underpants’s campaign manager, and his receiving money from Freddie Mac until last month. Here’s the transcript from CBS News:

Sarah Palin: My understanding is that Rick Davis recused himself from the dealings of the firm. I don’t know how long ago, a year or two ago that he’s not benefiting from that. And you know, I was – I would hope that’s not the case.

Katie Couric: But he still has a stake in the company so isn’t that a conflict of interest?

Palin: Again, my understanding is that he recused himself from the dealings with Freddie and Fannie, any lobbying efforts on his part there. And I would hope that’s the case because, as John McCain has been saying, and as I’ve on a much more local level been also rallying against is the undue influence of lobbyists in public policy decisions being made.

I have misplaced my $hithead-to-English dictionary, so if anyone can translate that last part for me, I would be very grateful.

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Meet (everybody except) the Press

From The Boston Globe:

NEW YORK – Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin threw herself into a crash course in diplomacy at the United Nations yesterday, beginning her first of two days of meetings with foreign leaders, including Afghan president Hamid Karzai, Colombian president Álvaro Uribe, Pakistani president Ali Asif Zardari, and Iraqi president Jalal Talabani.

The meetings with Palin, who had never met a foreign head of state before and who traveled outside North America for the first time last year, were designed to bolster her foreign policy credentials and introduce her to close US allies with whom she would work if she became vice president.

But the carefully orchestrated visits also highlighted the degree to which John McCain’s presidential campaign will go to shield the first-term Alaska governor from the press. Until CNN threatened to withdraw its pool camera crew, Palin’s aides initially banned reporters, who are traditionally allowed to briefly view private diplomatic meetings that are being photographed, and are sometimes allowed to ask questions.

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Risky Business

From NewsHounds:

You know Neil Cavuto right? He’s the head of “business news” at the Fox “News” Channel and at the Fox” Business” Network.

Here’s what he had to say about the financial crisis when discussing it with Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA):

Did you warn or express concern about any things that happened? I’m not saying that one or the other is beyond blame, I’m just saying I don’t remember a clarion call that said Fannie and Freddie are a disaster. Loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster? Maybe if you said it, enlighten me.

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Oh Henry!

From Barron’s:

BABY, IT’S COLD OUT THERE. So let’s toss another billion on the fire.

What’s that make it? Well, let’s see: $29 billion for Bear Stearns, somewhere between $1 billion and $100 billion each for Fannie and Freddie (a nice narrow range), $85 billion for AIG, a couple of hundred billion to keep stray banks, brokers and their errant kin from asphyxiating themselves by swallowing toxic paper. And then there’s the proposed reincarnation of the Resolution Trust Corp., which all by itself may mean shelling out $800 billion, perhaps even as much as $1 trillion.

While we’re at it, we might as well include the $400 billion with which the Paulson-Bernanke grand plan envisages endowing the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. so it can insure money-market funds.

But, please, understand those mind-boggling sums in no way, shape or form are to be construed as designed to aid and abet a bailout. Instead, they are merely the essential ingredients of an “intervention,” or, if you prefer, a “rescue” — just about anything, in other words, that’s semantically sweeter than bailout, with its ugly connotation of a sinking ship.

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Debate and Switch

From The Vancouver Sun:

It’s the U.S. election debate that most interested observers have been eagerly waiting for – Democratic vice-presidential nominee Joe Biden against Republican VP choice Sarah Palin – but don’t expect them to get into many verbal exchanges.

According to a report in the New York Times Saturday, the campaign of Senator John McCain has fought for tight rules on how the VP debate will run, limiting the chances of anything other than short answers, and ensuring the debaters will not speak directly to one another for anything more than short periods.

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