Former McCain Adviser Charles Fried: Sarah Palin Is "Ignorant and Inexperienced"

Charles Fried, Ronald Reagan's Solicitor General, former Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, current Harvard Law Professor and, until this week, McCain adviser.

More on Charles Fried's endorsement of Barack Obama by the conservative legal scholar and former McCain advisor. It's all about Palin.

HuffPo: Conservative Legal Icon Charles Fried Elaborates on His Obama Endorsement

In a letter to the McCain campaign, he asked that his name be removed from their legal advisory committee, explaining that the key reason "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."

I asked Professor Fried to elaborate on what, if anything, this says about Obama and abortion. He responded to me with this email:

"There are many issues facing the country that are more important than what the President says or believes about abortion. I suspect that there are a great many things that Obama believes and will do with which I will disagree -- starting with his judicial nominees, but in a time of economic and foreign policy crisis I found the risk of promoting to the presidency a person as ignorant and inexperienced as Sarah Palin -- natural political talent though she is -- unacceptable."

There's not enough lipstick in the world to cover up vast ignorance and inexperience.

Sarah Palin is George W. Bush in Lipstick

Keith Olbermann shows that Sarah Palin's handlers have put George W. Bush's deceptive words in her lipsticked mouth:



Winker/Wanker '08

Liar/Liar '08 Loses Another Member of Its Base

The media has always been John McCain's base, laughing along with him on the bus and at the barbecues, accepting his lame excuses for all his wild flips and gyrations on policy. No more.

Richard Cohen, WaPo: The Ugly New McCain

[] He has become the sort of politician he once despised.

The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View," the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig -- an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.

"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."

Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like "Home Cooking" or "We Will Not Be Undersold." Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't.

"Actually, they are not lies," he said.

Actually, they are.

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though.

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McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

[]

But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.

Dishonor

This YouTube video is 10 times better than any ad the Democrats have paid their rich consultants to come up with:



Tag line: "John McCain said he refuses to define honor. Maybe that's because honor no longer defines John McCain."

hat tip to Americablog.

Sarah Palin: "Cocky Whacko"

Dependable Renegade

That's what former Republican Senator from Rhode Island Lincoln Chafee called Sarah Palin yesterday. He also called her dangerous. He's right on both counts.

She holds whacky and dangerous views. In saying goodbye to her son who was deploying to Iraq, she said Iraq had caused 9/11 -- a view so extreme that even George W. Clusterfuck doesn't say that any more.

In her series of interviews with Charlie Gibson, she said that if Russia invaded Georgia, we would go to war (bottom of page, continues on to page 3). And starting World War III didn't phase her one bit. She delivered her answers in her bizarrely chirpy cheerleader voice as though it were perfectly normal to contemplate World War III. She'd be a war president.

Sarah Palin isn't lipstick on a pig. She's George W. Bush in lipstick, ready to be a war president but having no idea or concern about what that would mean for the country and for the world. A dangerous cocky whacko.

Barack on Letterman

From CBS, an video excerpt with just the serious parts of the conversation.

From HuffPo, a video excerpt with the first three minutes of his appearance.

You can go to the David Letterman Show's website for a longer clip of the appearance, but it's slow as hell. Why don't they just use Youtube or Brightcove or one of the other easier to play video sites? Or at least use their technology.

Here are some videos where John McCain uses the phrase "lipstick on a pig" in describing Hillary Clinton's health care plan:

Lipstick on a Pig '08

Lipstick on a Pig

Yesterday's Daily Inspiration - prescient
When Barack Obama said John McCain's campaign was like putting lipstick on a pig, why was the first thing McCain thought of Sarah Palin?

McCain's complaining about Obama's use of the expression is even more ridiculous when you realize that he used it to describe Hillary Clinton's health care plan -- in 2007. Was he calling Hillary a pig? I call on Johnny Hothead to apologize immediately.

Firedoglake: Dumber than a stump

Note to self: McCain desperation meter rising. Hide lime jello and cottage cheese.

Also, send his campaign a note that they should consult with his former advisor, Torie Clark, whose last book was entitled "Lipstick on a Pig" before they make even bigger asses of themselves.

On second thought, scratch that. Bless his heart. Fax McCain a copy of his own words regarding Hillary Clinton back in 2007, because he probably forgot about this:

While he said he had not studied Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's health-care plan, he said it was "eerily reminiscent" of the failed plan she offered as first lady in the early 1990s.

"I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig," he said of her proposal.

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You know what is sexist, though? Joking about rape. Calling your wife a c#*&. Or joking about Chelsea Clinton's parents being Hillary and Janet Reno. Pot, this is kettle, McCain. (That's a joke, too. Have your wife look it up for you on teh Google.)