Posted 9/16/2008

NEW YORK TIMES HOUNDS SARAH PALIN

When Joe Biden was selected by Barack Obama to be his VP running mate, old Joe huffily said, "I won't be your attack dog."

This really worried Obama's staff, because their candidate needed an attack dog to bloody the opponents while allowing Obama to dance and prance among the silky white clouds.

But Obamaists need not have worried. The New York Times excused a whole pack of reporters and columnists from their journalistic duties to become instant attack dogs – and set them on Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin.

Into the fray charged Maureen "The Shiv" Dowdy, Tommy "The Gun" Friedman, Bobby "Slick Man" Hebert, Frankie "The Shark" Rich and the whole editorial kennel – with shining fangs, monstrous howls and salivating jaws.

No longer would these former journalists pretend to provide unbiased opinions and reporting. Now they would lie, cheat, tell half-truths and manufacture more propaganda in a week than the Nazis' Joseph Goebbels produced in five years.

Here are their best efforts - along with the truth:

The attack: "As governor, Sarah Palin appointed her friends to high office."

The Truth: Every President in history has appointed his friends and sympathizers to cabinet office. The only one who appointed his enemies was John Adams, who failed as President when his enemies sabotaged him.

The attack: "Governor Palin is the 'earmarks queen of Alaska'."

The Truth: Governor Palin called earmarks 'corrupting' and has reduced the dollar amount flowing into Alaska since she was elected governor.

The attack: "She is the governor of a small state."

The Truth: She presides over the largest state in the union, which has a budget of $12 billion. When Bill Clinton, governor of Arkansas, was elected President, his state's budget was only $2 billion.

The attack: "Alaska gets more earmark funds per capita than any other state."

The Truth: Earmarks are spent on infrastructure like bridges, roads, harbor facilities and buildings. The larger the size of the state, the greater the cost of the infrastructure needs. Alaska is more than twice the size of Texas, yet receives less than half its earmark funds. The land mass of Alaska is 16% of the U.S. total – yet Alaska in 2008 is scheduled to receive less than one percent of all federal earmark funds. Some would say that Governor should be doing a better job of obtaining earmarks for her state.

The attack: "She is making American stupid by leading cheers of 'Drill Baby Drill' - which focuses on a 19th century fossil fuel."

The Truth: Oil is a 20th and 21st century fossil fuel. Wood and coal were the leading American fuels of the 19th century. And Governor Palin said, "We must develop alternate, clean fuels as fast as we can." Besides the talk, she has arranged for the building of a $38 billion natural gas pipeline from Alaska, through Canada, to the lower 48 states. She has been walking the energy walk, while others have merely talked.

The attack: "She is not prepared to be President, which is serious because John McCain is old and could die."

The Truth: According to actuarial charts, 72-year-old John McCain will live 12 additional years when inaugurated. And that's just what the averages say. If he is as healthy as his medical reports indicate, the averages would extend to almost twice that.

The attack: "She is not capable of being President."

The Truth: She is a powerful, successful governor with an 80% approval rating. Can any of the other 49 governors make that statement? Moreover, many critics claimed that Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton were too young and inexperienced to be President when they were campaigning for the nation's highest office. And some of those most lauded as being highly qualified were abysmal failures. Think Grant, Coolidge, Hoover, Johnson and Nixon.

The attack: "She is not ready because she was clueless on the Bush Doctrine."

The Truth: Everybody was clueless on the Bush Doctrine – including interviewer Charles Gibson. This suggests that there is no clear Bush Doctrine – certainly nothing as clear as the "Truman Doctrine" or the "Monroe Doctrine."

The media has attempted to interpret Bush into four different doctrines. When he refused the Kyoto Treaty, the media said Bush Doctrine was "unilateralism." After 9/11, the same media claimed his doctrine was "us or them." (You are with us or against us.) The invasion of Iraq produced a third "Bush Doctrine" dubbed "preventive warfare." All three doctrines are four or more years old and no longer applicable. President Bush's "fourth doctrine" is dubbed "spreading democracy worldwide to prevent anti-American dictatorships." He enunciated this during his second inaugural address.

Even the brilliant George Will admitted he would have flunked the Gibson question. Actually, Charles Gibson of ABC flunked it as well.

The attack: "Her comments, 'You must not blink, Charlie....' suggest she does not reflect properly. She sounds more like Bush in 2000."

The Truth: She was talking about not showing weakness in the face of challenges and adversity. A blinking President can be very dangerous for the U.S.

Kennedy admittedly blinked in his conference with Soviet Premier Khrushchev and the feisty Russian quickly built the Berlin Wall and put missiles in Cuba. During the Cuban missile crisis, when the American fleet faced down oncoming Soviet ships, it was Khrushchev's turn to blink – resulting in a huge loss of face and his ouster from office. President Carter blinked with Soviet Premier Brezhnev, who promptly invaded Afghanistan. The worst international blinking in history was the performance of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain when he and the French leaders blinked over Hitler's rearming, and the Munich Conference which gave up Czechoslovakia. That blinking brought on World War II.

The attack: "Palin doesn't realized that the Russian invasion of Georgia was not entirely unprovoked. She thinks we should go to war over Georgia."

The Truth: Attack Dog Maureen Dowdy wins the Nobel Prize for Appeasement by excusing Russia's invasion of a smaller, sovereign state. If Georgia had been a member of NATO, we would have been obligated by treaty to fight the Russians.

This is one of the largest foreign policy issues to confront the country. "Are we willing to go to war to fight a Russian invasion of NATO allies Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland?" It was just such an entangling alliance that led to the catastrophe of World War I. And yet none of the four candidates have even touched on the issue. When it comes to NATO, are we stickers or blinkers? Attack Dog Dowdy even suggests that we should "second guess" Israel if it moves to defend itself. Israel has a blinker in Dowdy and a loyal sticker in Palin.

The New York Times Attack Kennel believes it is strong enough to destroy Sarah Palin. But it is likely to produce a backlash against a proud newspaper which is struggling for circulation and advertising. The newspaper is clearly over-reaching. Even in the New York Times home base, Obama is sinking in the ratings.

The owners of the Times should remember what happened to Dan Rather and CBS News when they tried to fix the last presidential election with an obviously false document.

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