formerGOP's Blog

the GOP has reached a new low, just when I thought we could not get any lower, they vote in a Bootleg Obama!

 

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Members of the Republican National Committee elected their first-ever African-American party chief on Friday, choosing former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele to chair the organization after six rounds of tumultuous balloting.

After five rounds of voting, the race for the chairmanship came down to a choice between Steele and Katon Dawson, the South Carolina GOP chairman who secured strong support from party insiders after former chairman Mike Duncan dropped out of the race earlier in the day.

Steele emerged as the winner on the sixth ballot, winning with 91 votes. A candidate needed a simple majority of 85 votes from the 168-member committee to secure victory.

CNN Poll: Most African-Americans say King's vision fulfilled Posted: 07:18 AM ET
From CNN Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser
Martin Luther King Jr. waves to supporters from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – More than two-thirds of African-Americans believe Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision for race relations has been fulfilled, a CNN poll out Monday found, a figure up sharply from a survey in early 2008.

The CNN-Opinion Research Corp. survey was released Monday, a federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader and a day before Barack Obama is to be sworn in as the first black U.S. president.

In it, 69 percent of African-Americans said King's vision has been fulfilled in the more than 45 years since his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech — roughly double the 34 percent who agreed with that assessment in a similar poll taken last March.

 

James "Little Man" Presley has worked in the cotton fields of Sledge, Mississippi, since he was just 6 years old.

1 of 3 more photos »

SLEDGE, Mississippi (CNN) -- James Presley stands amid chopped cotton, the thick Mississippi mud caked on his well-worn boots. A smile spreads across his face when he talks about voting for Barack Obama and what that might mean for generations to come. His voice picks up a notch. He holds his head up a bit higher.

"There's a heap of pride in voting for a black man," he says.

At 78, Presley is a legend of the past living in the present and now hopeful for the future. A grandson of slaves, he's one of the few men left in America so closely tied to his slave past, still farming cotton on the same land as his ancestors. He's picked cotton since he was just 6 years old.

He and his wife of 57 years, Eva May, raised 13 children and six grandchildren in a cypress-sided house in the middle of cotton fields in northwestern Mississippi. He was a sharecropper most his life, but rarely qualified for food stamps. Watch "Obama, he come up like" »

His father died in 1935 when he was 5, and he had to step up and be the "Little Man" of the house, a nickname that has stuck seven decades later.

He's lived a raw-knuckled life where hope moved at a molasses-slow pace. The last time he had hope for a better future was four decades ago -- first with President John F. Kennedy and then with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Obama has changed everything to the poor in these parts. iReport.com: What does Obama's presidency mean to you?

"I'm a church man," he says. "And I kind of figured this here is about like it was with Moses with the children of Israel. On that day, when he gets to be president, we're all going to be rejoicing."

When Are WE Going to Get Over It?

For much of the last forty years, ever since America "fixed" its race problem in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, we white people have been impatient with African Americans who continued to blame race for
their difficulties. Often we have heard whites ask, "When are African Americans finally going to get over it?  Now I want to ask "When are we White Americans going to get over our ridiculous obsession with skin color?

Recent reports that "Election Spurs 'Hundred
s' of Race Threats, Crimes" should frighten and infuriate every one of us. Having grown up in "Bombingham," Alabama in the 1960s, I remember overhearing an avalanche
of comments about what many white classmates and their parents wanted to do to John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Eventually, as you
may recall, in all three cases, someone decided to do more than "talk the talk." Since our recent pre sidential election, to our eternal shame we are once again hearing the same reprehensible talk I remember from my boyhood.

We white people have controlled political life in the disunited colonies and United States for some 400 years on this continent. Conservative whites have been in power 28 of the last 40 years. Even during the eight Clinton years, conservatives in Congress blocked most of his agenda and
pulled him to the right. Yet never in that period did I read any headlines suggesting that anyone was calling for the assassinations of presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, or either of the Bushes. Criticize them, yes. Call for their impeachment, perhaps. But there were no bounties on
their heads. And even when someone did try to kill Ronald Reagan, the perpetrator was non-political mental case who wanted merely to impress Jody Foster.

But elect a liberal who happens to be black and we're back in the sixties again. At this point in our history, we should be proud that we've proven what conservatives are always saying-that in America anything is possible, EVEN electing a black man as president. But instead we now hear that schoolchildren from Maine to California are talking about wanting to "assassinate Obama."

Fighting the urge to throw up, I can only ask, "How long?"  How long before we white people realize we can't make our nation, much less the whole world, look like us? How long until we white people can-once and for all-get over this hell-conceived preoccupation with skin color?  How long until we white people get over the demonic conviction that white
skin makes us superior? 

How long before we white people get over our bitter resentments about being demoted to the status of equality with non-whites?

 How long before we get over our expectations that we should
be at the head of the line merely because of our white skin?

How longuntil we white people end our silence and call out our peers when they share the latest racist jokes in the privacy of our white-only conversations?

 I believe in free speech, but how long until we white
people start making racist loudmouths as socially uncomfortable as we do flag burners?

How long until we white people will stop insisting that
blacks exercise personal responsibility, build strong families, educate themselves enough to edit the Harvard Law Review, and work hard enough to become President of the United States, only to threaten to assassinate them when they do?

How long before we starting "living out the true meaning" of our creeds, both civil and religious, that all men
and women are created equal and that "red and yellow, black and white" all are precious in God's sight?

Until this past November 4, I didn't believe this country would ever elect an African American to the presidency.  I still don't be lieve I'll live long enough to see us white people get over our racism problem.

But here's my three-point plan: First, everyday that Barack Obama lives in he White House that Black Slaves Built I'm going to pray that God (and the Secret Service) will protect him and his family from us white people.

Second, I'm going to report to the FBI any white person I overhear saying, in seriousness or in jest, anything of a threatening nature about President Obama.

Third, I'm going to pray to live long enough to see America surprise the world once again, when white people
can "in spirit and in truth" sing of our BLEEPable color prejudice, "We HAVE overcome."

 Andrew Manis is author of Macon Black and White and serves on the steering committee of Macon's Center for Racial Understanding.

Pass this on to everyone who dare to care and continual to pray and
plead the blood over our President Barack Obama and his family

President Obama predicted that Florida would defeat Oklahoma in tonight’s BCS championship.

WELL!

Florida 24, Oklahoma 14

I guess he knows what he is talking about

Again!

This country had an institution of slavery for 246 years and followed it with Jim Crow laws that denied people equal opportunity under the law. There was segregation in the south and other places in this country, at least through the year 1965 when civil rights laws were passed. There were separate water fountains for people, marked white and colored, there were restaurants, there were separate hotels, there were job opportunities that were not available to African-Americans. There were theaters that were segregated.

It's hard to imagine, in 2008, that such a society existed and was sanctioned by law, that the laws of the nation provided for segregation and enforced slave fugitive slave laws. In fact, the history of slavery goes not just through the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to our constitution, but as so eloquently written, just yesterday, in "The Baltimore Sun" in an editorial by Mr. Leonard Pitts Jr., that slavery existed up until about World War II, but it was a form of slavery where people were bought and sold for debts, it was slavery by another name. In a book called Slavery By Another Name by Douglass Blackman, a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, when he talked about a convict leasing system in the south where in poor black men were routinely snatched up and tried on false petty or nonexistent charges by compliant courts, assessed some fine they could not afford, and then put into the servitude of an individual who bought them. This system continued up until World War II.

The fact is, slavery and Jim Crow are stains upon what is the greatest nation on the face of the earth and the greatest government ever conceived by man. But when we conceived this government and said all men were created equal we didn't in fact make all men equal, nor did we make women equal. We have worked to form a more perfect union, and part of forming a more perfect union is laws, and part of it is such as resolutions like we have before us today where we face up to our mistakes and we apologize, as anyone should apologize for things that were done in the past that were wrong. And we begin a dialogue that will hopefully lead us to a better understanding of where we are in America today and why certain conditions exist.

Another One bites the dust!

 

Grand jury returns 43-count indictment against Rep. Renzi Posted: 10:30 AM ET
From CNN Justice Producer Terry Frieden
The Justice Department annnounced an indictment against Arizona Rep. Richard Renzi Thursday.

(CNN) — Rep. Richard Renzi of Arizona has been reindicted on 43 criminal counts by a federal grand jury in Arizona, adding racketeering and tax allegations to previous charges, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

The superseding indictment stems from a land deal that allegedly netted Renzi more than $700,000 in exchange for supporting legislation. It comes as Renzi, a Republican, prepares to leave office and face a criminal trial.

He announced he would not seek re-election after he was indicted last February.

Three other defendants also were named in the new indictment.

Filed under: Rick Renzi

 

 

The GOP is falling apart, and you have to wonder why! Could it be that truth is out!

The GOP has taken advantage of our country for far tolong, and we are not taking anymore!

 

 

 

 

 

5 Reasons Sarah Palin Would Lose a 2012 Presidential Bid

Before John McCain’s presidential bid had even ended, many were touting Sarah Palin as a possible GOP presidential candidate for 2012. And in an interview with Matt Lauer this morning, Palin said that, “if there is a door open in 2012 or four yeas later…then I’ll plow through that door.”

If Sarah Palin tries to run for president in 2012, she’ll get plowed over. In fact, she probably wouldn’t even make it out of the primary. Palin-watchers can take their pick from a plethora of reasons as to why.

Reason Number 1: Too Many Better Candidates

The dust hasn’t even settled from the 2008 contest, and Republicans are already salivating over who the next GOP presidential nominee will be. To be sure, Palin’s name is among those that are being floated as possible candidates, along with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, and South Dakota Senator John Thune.  But does it really stand out?

Experience-wise, every single one of those candidates puts Palin to shame. Additionally, each of those candidate brings far more expertise to the table than Palin. And maybe that will change over the next four years. But in the meantime, Romney is seen by many as an expert on economic issues by virtue of his successful construction (and later resuscitation) of Bain Capital, and given current economic concerns, that could be a big arrow in his quiver. Newt Gingrich and Tim Pawlenty are probably the truest conservatives of the bunch, and in fact would probably be more solidly aligned with the conservative base than any GOP candidate since George H.W. Bush was the nominee as the incumbent president back in 1992. Candidates like Jindal and Thune are largely considered by many to be the future of the Republican Party. Palin would have a difficult time distinguishing herself from the breadth of possibility in that field.

Reason Number 2: The Primary Process Has A Heavy Debate Emphasis

The 2008 presidential election season was unprecedented in the visibility of candidates. En route to the nomination, John McCain participated in 17 debates in the primary race alone. Few will argue with the assertion that Sarah Palin is at her worst in (a) debates, and (b) one-on-one interviews. It was a constant worry of the McCain campaign, and a primary reason behind the fact that Palin only debated Democratic vice-presidential nominee (and now Vice President-elect) Joe Biden one time. On that occasion, expectations going into the forum were lowered to a point that essentially credited Palin with an incredible performance as long as she managed to avoid a catastrophic failure.

She wouldn’t have that benefit if she were on the stage with Romney (a prolific debater), Gingrich, Jindal, Thune, or Pawlenty, to say nothing of any other GOP candidates who might jump in the race.

Reason Number 3: The GOP Favors Candidates Who’ve Sought the Presidency Before

With the exception of George W. Bush, Republicans tend to favor candidates who’ve sought the nomination before. John McCain (’08), Bob Dole (‘96), George H.W. Bush (‘92, ‘88), Ronald Reagan (‘80, ‘84), Richard Nixon (‘72, ‘68), Barry Goldwater (‘64)- all of them sought the GOP nomination at least one time before eventually winning it (Gerald Ford is absent from the list, because he was the incumbent president and nominee in ‘76 without ever actually having been elected president in the first place). That kind of news bodes well for a candidate like Mitt Romney, who made a substantial impact in 2008, but fell short.

Reason Number 4: Barack Obama Already Defeated Sarah Palin

Palin participated in a Republican ticket that got handed its worst electoral beating since 1964. On the safe assumption that Barack Obama would seek a second term in 2012 2008, she’d be facing the same guy who demolished her ticket the first time around.

Moreover, Obama didn’t just beat McCain-Palin in swing states.  He didn’t even just beat them in states that are only moderately Republican. He beat them in GOP strongholds like North Carolina and Virginia. Palin was brought in as McCain’s running mate not only to make an offensive run at women, but also to shore up conservative and rural support. She couldn’t do it. It’s hard to see how she’d have any better luck on her own four years from now.

Reason Number 5: Palin Has Enough Baggage

Between Troopergate, her use of campaign funds for a pricey shopping spree, her former membership in an Alaskan separatist group, and her history of handing out high-paying government patronage jobs to her girlfriends from high school and college, Palin had a lot weighing her down in the 2008 race before her qualifications were even addressed. Romney’s biggest problem was that he began as a much more liberal politician than he is now. But that pales in comparison to Palin’s ethically questionable behavior. Gingrich had an extramarital affair, but he admitted that years ago, so it’s not really a newsworthy issue anymore. And Jindal, Pawlenty, and Thune are clean…for now anyway. Palin will have a tough time getting voters to look past her problems, particularly when there are other more qualified candidates to choose from who don’t have that kind of baggage.

 ...

It’s not to say that Sarah Palin will never have a shot at the White House.  In fact, if she were to run for reelection as Governor of Alaska in 2010, and Alaska’s Senate seat in 2014 (whether it’s Ted Stevens or Mark Begich or someone else in that seat), she might have a decent shot by 2016.  But 2012 is a lost cause.  And if Democrats know what’s good for them, they’ll hope Palin pulls the trigger on her own presidential bid sooner rather than later.

http://www.therealright.com/blog/content/id_37924/tit
le_5-Reasons-Sarah-Palin-Would-Lose-a-2012-Presidential
-Bid/

Sarah Palin Will Never Be President -- Trust Me

The small smear of red on the otherwise blue electoral map looks more like a minor bloodstain on a dirty Band-Aid than anything resembling a national political party. Who voted for McCain/Palin in bigger numbers than they even voted for Bush/Cheney? Only one shrinking group: uneducated white folks in the deep south and a few folks in Appalachia. Take away the white no-college-backwoods-and/or-southern McCain/Palin vote and the Republicans would have been approaching single digit electoral college oblivion.

Sarah Palin will never hold national office nor will any Republican at the presidential level for a long time to come. Why? Because America has uneducated jerks in it but is not a nation of uneducated jerks. The Republicans are done, hoisted on the petard of their own "southern strategy."

The Republican Party is only a step away from becoming the fringe of the fringe, identified more with cross-burning weirdoes wearing hoods, folks like the Alaska secessionist party, all those gun owners stocking up on assault weapons before the "Socialist/United Nations/Obama/Muslim" conspiracy comes to fruition, than with anything remotely like a serious national political force.

The Republican Party--and I speak as a former lifelong Republican who, up through the 2000 primary campaign supported John McCain and even worked for him by arguing his case on various conservative and religious radio stations--is now the toy of the Rush Limbaugh windbags. These folks include outright crazies (such as Sarah Palin's Assemblies of God pals who are waiting for Spaceship Jesus to rescue them and/or rooting out "witches" from their midst), white racists and a few not-very-bright attention seekers, including Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity etc.

Read their blogs! Listen to their talk radio! You'll be in the twilight zone of front page tabloid fantasy on a par with Bat Boy Attacks! headlines. Bill Buckley roll over.

The Religious Right, the racists, the anti-gay hate-mongers are now not only marginalized but thoroughly out of step with even members of their own former constituency. For instance the Gordon College student newspaper (Gordon is an influential Evangelical College north of Boston) endorsed Obama this year. Many young evangelicals voted for the Democrats. James Dobson, Fox News, Limbaugh et al. were utterly powerless to do more than stir up hate. They are losing the next generation of their "base."

Meanwhile many former Republicans--like me--ran to Obama as fast as our legs could carry us and away from our willfully "we're not an elite" moronic former party. Republican commentators such as David Brooks and George Will mourned the loss of the Republican center. Others noted the Republicans have become anti-intellectual. "Anti-intellectual?" They wish! How about simply anti-literate?

Meanwhile the fringe of the fringe is holding meetings where they'll talk to themselves and look at the "facts" of their alternative universe in order to figure out "what went wrong." These are the same "leaders" (like William Kristal) who think Sarah Palin has a big political future!

Sarah Palin will never be president because the right wing of the Republican Party has perfected the art of believing their own BLEEP, starting with the idea that is-Africa-a-country-or-a-continent?-Palin has a future. Palin and her fans don't know it yet, but having reduced itself to a grim angry joke, the Republican Party has also divorced itself from American politics and, along with that dirty used Band-Aid, is destined for the garbage can.

What's the best defense against the rube/Palin voters derailing the Republican Party forever? If the statistics of who voted for whom are correct, the education of white people in the deep South and their economic empowerment is the best answer. Maybe it will take a black Democratic president to figure out some affirmative action program that can get our southern born-again white underclass into colleges and thereby save the Republican party.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/s
arah-palin-will-never-be_b_143036.html

 

Why is Sarah Palin still talking?

Can she go back to Alaska and shut up… it is sad and pathetic how she talks about her aids taking things she said out of context, WHAT ! She is upset that they are taking things she said out of context and then she had the nerve to call them bully’s!! WHAT

I seem to remember Sarah taking things that President Obama said so far out of context that she was lying on the man, and now when the TRUTH comes out about her she wants to say people are being mean to her… well Sarah honey when you do dirt you get dirt! And the sad part is, they are your people who turned on you!

 

Texas' Buck Burnette Learns Why Racist Obama Facebook Updates Are Dumb

Posted Nov 6th 2008 2:30PM by Will Brinson (author feed)
Filed under: Texas, Big 12, NCAA FB Campus, NCAA FB Coaching, NCAA FB Gossip, NCAA FB Scandal, General CFB Insanity

For those that don't know, Facebook status updates are broadcast to everyone you know. So, if you're going to post something that sounds racist or bigoted, well, don't.

Texas Longhorn lineman Buck Burnette learned this the hard way. See, here was Buck's Facebook status following Barack Obama's win the presidential election:
"all the hunters gather up, we have a #$%&er in the whitehouse"
Geez, Buck. Even if you actually feel that way -- which is sad -- why not just keep it to yourself? You know, instead of telling five million people. But he didn't, and naturally, he is now paying the price; he's been kicked off the UT football team.

On the very tiny bright side, Burnette at least claims to be somewhat remorseful and not racist, issuing the following apology: Clearly I have made a mistake and apologized for it and will pay for it. I received it as a text message from an acquaintance and immaturely put it up on facebook in the light of the election. Im not racist and apologize for offending you. I grew up on a ranch in a small town where that was a real thing and I need to grow up. I sincerely am sorry for being ignorant in thinking that it would be ok to write that publicly and apologize to you in particular. I have to be more mature than to put the reputation of my team at stake and to spread that kind of hate which I dont even believe in. Once again, I sincerely apologize.
Yeah, that's all fine and dandy, but it doesn't really help the whole situation.

Burnette, C Texas: The backup lineman has been dismissed from the team after he posted a racially-charged facebook update about Barack Obama's election win. Burnette claimed poor judgment in an apology, but it was too little, too late. Check out other athletes who got in trouble for boneheaded mistakes.

North Carolina Called For Obama

Final Tally: 364 Obama

162 McCain

RALEIGH, N.C. — President-elect Obama won North Carolina on Thursday, a triumph that underscored his political strength as he turned nine states that President Bush won in 2004 to Democratic blue.

The Associated Press declared Obama the winner after canvassing counties in North Carolina to determine the number of outstanding provisional ballots. That survey found that there are not enough remaining ballots for Republican John McCain to close a 13,693-vote deficit.

North Carolina's 15 electoral votes brings Obama's total to 364 _ nearly 100 more than necessary to win the White House _ to McCain's 162. Missouri is the only state that remains too close to call, with McCain leading by several thousand votes.

Obama's win in North Carolina was the first for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter won the state in 1976.

Of Bush's 2004 states, Obama captured Virginia, Florida and North Carolina in the South, Ohio, Indiana and Iowa in the Midwest and Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico in the West. All total, Obama has won 28 states and the District of Columbia, McCain 21.

Obama ran an aggressive general election campaign in North Carolina after his wide primary victory in the state over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton suggested he could win a trove of electoral votes that most assumed would belong to McCain.

The Obama campaign's focus on the state's two-week early voting period was critical. Obama won more than 1.1 million early votes, giving him a 180,000-vote advantage heading into Election Day _ a gap too great for McCain to overcome.

McCain spent months watching North Carolina from afar during the summer as Obama visited regularly, but the GOP nominee returned to the state in the campaign's final few weeks as polls suggested an Obama victory was possible.

Obama spent millions of televisions ads that were buttressed by hundreds of staff members in dozens of offices to take advantage of North Carolina's rapidly changing demographics and a large bloc of black voters galvanized by his bid to become the first African-American president.

North Carolina's growing population includes a booming urban corridor from Charlotte to Raleigh along Interstate 85, while retirees from northern states _ who are more willing to vote for Democrats _ are filling the state's coast and mountains.

Exit polls also showed that some 30 percent of voters considered race a factor in their decision, with the numbers split evenly among voters who backed McCain and Obama. Nearly one in five voters considered race an important factor.

The economy also played a role _ with 60 percent of voters considering it the top issue, with those voters breaking slightly to Obama. The state's manufacturing industry has been devastated by competitive imports, and the state's banking economy centered in Charlotte was struck by economic turmoil that led to the downfall of Wachovia Corp., in the weeks before Election Day.

Obama's win completed the party's sweep at the top of the North Carolina ticket. Beverly Perdue was elected the state's first female governor, while Kay Hagan unseated one of the GOP's most respected figures in Sen. Elizabeth Dole.

 Racial Tensions Flair on Baylor Campus

 

WACO - As pundits are hailing the election of the first African-American President, political and racial tensions are flaring on the Campus of Baylor University. Baylor Police are reporting three separate incidents took place on campus that are interlaced with racial tension.Interim President David Garland described the events in an email to students:

 

“Late Tuesday afternoon we were notified of a single clothesline rope that had been seen in a tree on campus. The individuals who discovered it believed it had the appearance of a noose. Baylor police are now in possession of the rope and continue to speak with students who observed the rope in the tree and are gathering additional information about the origin of the rope.

Last evening, police investigated a small fire in a barbecue pit adjacent to Brooks Flats in which it was alleged several Obama/Biden campaign signs had been burned.

Finally, police were called late last evening to a disturbance outside Penland Hall, where a shouting match had occurred between two small groups of white and African-American students.

These events are deeply disturbing to us and are antithetical to the mission of Baylor University. We categorically denounce and will not tolerate racist acts of any kind on our campus.

Further, we are committed to maintaining the safety and unity of our campus community. We wish to celebrate and strengthen inclusiveness, understanding and acceptance of all members of the Baylor family.

As they have thus far, Baylor police will respond quickly and decisively to any additional situations of this nature. Faculty, staff and students with information pertaining to any of the incidents we’ve described are urged to contact Baylor police at 710-2222.

Faculty, staff and students also participate in on-going weekly meetings hosted by our department of multicultural activities called “Frankly Speaking” in which issues of the day are discussed in a respectful and civil manner. The goal of “Frankly Speaking” is for participants to feel comfortable expressing their opinions and beliefs within a safe environment. The meetings are held in the Bill Daniel Student Center each Tuesday from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m., and members of the Baylor community are invited to participate.

We believe that the incidents on our campus yesterday were irresponsible acts committed by a few individuals. As a community we condemn these terribly unfortunate events that do not represent the values we share as members of the Baylor family.” Source>>>

 

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Palin Didn't Know Africa Is A Continent, Says Fox News Reporter (VIDEO)

 

Now that the 2008 election is over, reporters are spilling all the juciest, and previously off the record, gossip from the campaign trail. Much of it is about the infighting between Palin and McCain's staff, as Newsweek's treasure trove of post-election gossip reveals.

However, perhaps one of the most astounding and previously unknown tidbits about Sarah Palin has to do with her already dubious grasp of geography. According to Fox News Chief Political Correspondent Carl Cameron, there was great concern within the McCain campaign that Palin lacked "a degree of knowledgeability necessary to be a running mate, a vice president, a heartbeat away from the presidency," in part because she didn't know which countries were in NAFTA, and she "didn't understand that Africa was a continent, rather than a series, a country just in itself."

Palin was apparently a nightmare for her campaign staff to deal with. She refused preparation help for her interview with Katie Couric and then blamed her staff, specifically Nicole Wallace, when the interview was panned as a disaster. After the Couric interview, Fox News reported, Palin turned nasty with her staff and began to accuse them of mishandling her. Palin would view press clippings of herself in the morning and throw "tantrums" over the negative coverage. There were times when she would be so nasty and angry that her staff was reduced to tears.

Watch the clip from The O'Reilly Factor below.

 

 

Praying with the President-elect Posted: 07:05 PM ET
From CNN Producer Eric Marrapodi
Before stepping on stage Tuesday night to address his supporters; the nation; and to a certain extent, the world, Sen. Barack Obama took a moment to pray with a conservative evangelical pastor.

(CNN) — Before he delivered his victory speech on Tuesday night in Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama took a call and bowed his head in prayer. Dr. Joel Hunter, pastor of Northland Church in Orlando, Florida and Otis Moss Jr. from Mount Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, Ohio joined him in that prayer.

Speaking with CNN today by phone, Dr. Hunter says the prayer was intensely personal and private but did say “I prayed for his family and for him and for the country. I had no agenda other than trying to create an environment in which he felt the presence and could receive wisdom from God.” Dr. Hunter, a conservative evangelical who delivered a prayer at the Democratic National Convention this summer, says the President-elect “…feels the weight of this responsibility. He [Obama] doesn’t take upon himself of having to have all the answers but he certainly realizes the huge challenges this nation faces. He feels the personal weight of the potential to guide us through these difficult times. I don’t think he’s oppressed by it though.” Dr. Hunter says he thinks it set in for Obama last night and led to the sober tone of the victory speech.