Clinton, Palin hold joint press conference

[Sisyphus]

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nMuR1TFq1s

[iNow]

I think YouTube has been doing some censoring lately. That's the third Palin related video today that was no longer available when I clicked the link.

 

 

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I think I found the video you wanted to share on an NBC site. It's amazing how similar they are:

 

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/palin-hillary-open/656281/?dst=nbc|widget|NBC%20Video&__source=nbc|widget|NBC%20Video

Edited September 14, 2008 by iNow
multiple post merged

[Pangloss]

Actually in the case of SNL that's not a new thing -- they're very aggressive about getting their stuff yanked ASAP in order to push their own video service. THAT gets censored, however, and rather severely -- some of their best sketches are deliberately delayed for dramatic presentation, or in some cases may never show up at all due to public-reaction controversy.

 

But you're right about YouTube censorship on the rise; it's seemed that way to me as well, and I think it's a really bad sign.

[iNow]

Read online...

 

 

 

I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....

 

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents,

you're "exotic, different."

 

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential

American story.

 

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic

Muslim.

 

Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a

maverick.

 

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.

 

Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating,

you're well grounded.

 

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer,

become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review,

create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new

voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor,

spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district

with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state

Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4

years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13

million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the

Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and

Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any

real leadership experience.

 

If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on

the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with

less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state

with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to

become the country's second highest ranking executive.

 

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years

while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant

churches, you're not a real Christian.

 

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress,

and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the

next month, you're a Christian.

 

If you teach teach children about sexual predators, you

are irresponsible and eroding the fiber of society.

 

If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence

only, with no other option in sex education in your

state's school system while your unwed teen daughter

ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

 

If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a

position in a prestigious law firm to work for the

betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to

raise a family, your family's values don't represent

America 's.

 

If you're husband is nicknamed "First

Dude", with at least one DWI conviction and no college

education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and

once was a member of a group that hates America and

advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family

is extremely admirable.

 

OK, much clearer now.

 

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But you're right about YouTube censorship on the rise; it's seemed that way to me as well, and I think it's a really bad sign.

They recently took down the viral video of her church and some of the crazies there who practice her form of kookiness.

 

 

http://richarddawkins.net/article,3121,n,n

Sarah Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of God and attended the church for over two and a half decades, and she has been publicly blessed by a number of pastors and religious leaders employed by and associated with that church.

 

Last Sunday our research team released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the Wasilla Assemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive "viral" breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing "inappropriate content".

 

At the point the video was censored by YouTube it had been viewed by almost 160,000 people. The short of it is that YouTube has censored a video documentary that appeared to be close to having an effect on a hard fought and contentious American presidential election.

 

Video at link.

[Pangloss]

I've seen that viral email as well, and I think it's just as vapidly partisan as the thing it propounds to attack. If some idiot extremist accuses your candidate of being a Muslim, then the entire opposition must think he is a Muslim? Please.

 

Two wrongs don't make a right.

[Sisyphus]

Some more revelations come to light about Palin's past, from Hockey Moms for Truth:

 

[john5746]

That's funny.

[iNow]

Someone hacked into Palin's personal email account, and posted it to a site called wikileaks. For the past several weeks, multiple stories have discussed Palin's use of her personal email so as to avoid the need to disclose communications to investigators, especially in context of the investigation of the state trooper she had fired. Well, someone hacked it. Nice. We're to trust her with national secrets?

 

 

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/09/17/palins_yahoo_account_hacked.html

 

"At around midnight last night some members affiliated with the group [anonymous] gained access to governor Palin's email account, 'gov.palin@yahoo.com' and handed over the contents to the government sunshine site Wikileaks.org," said a message on the site.

 

Rick Davis, the campaign manager for Sen. John McCain, issued a statement Wednesday afternoon condemning the incident.

[Pangloss]

What did she do, specifically, that was against the law?

[iNow]

Not sure. She used her personal account specifically so we couldn't find out.

[Pangloss]

So why can't we trust her with national secrets?

[iNow]

Because it was in the link I shared and it made me laugh.

Are you always such a stick in the mud?

 

 

 

The episode focuses attention on Palin's use of her personal e-mail account as lawmakers in Alaska probe whether she fired the state's police commissioner, Walter Monegan, because he refused to take action against her brother-in-law, a state trooper at the time.

 

Palin has come under fire in recent days for her use of a personal e-mail accounts to conduct state business. An Alaska activist has filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking disclosure of e-mails from another Yahoo! account that Palin used, gov.

sarah@yahoo.com

.

 

That account appears to have been linked to the one that was hacked.

 

Both accounts appear to have been deactivated. E-mails sent to them Wednesday afternoon were returned as undeliverable.

 

Andrée McLeod, the activist who filed the FOIA request, said Wednesday evening that Palin should have known better than to conduct state business using an unsecured e-mail account.

"If this woman is so careless as to conduct state business on a private e-mail account that has been hacked into, what in the world is she going to do when she has access to information that is vital to our national security interests?" she asked.

 

McLeod's Anchorage attorney, Donald C. Mitchell, said Palin refused to comply with a public records request in June to divulge 1,100 e-mails sent to and from her personal accounts, citing executive privilege.

 

"There's a reason the governor should be using her own official e-mail channels, because of security and encryption," the attorney said. "She's running state business out of Yahoo?"

Edited September 18, 2008 by iNow

[Dave]

So why can't we trust her with national secrets?

 

Frankly, if she is stupid enough to

 

(a) use an insecure, easily hackable, unencrypted public e-mail service to send government e-mails and

(b) claim that this account was not used, purely (it seems) for the purpose of circumventing Freedom of Information Act and other requests

 

then I would have serious doubts as to whether she can be trusted at all. Not only does it show a complete lack of thought for security procedures, but it shows contempt for any sort of accountability. Exactly the same thing happened in the White House, where a few months (or more) of e-mails were conveniently 'accidentally deleted'.

 

There is a clear reason why there are laws in place to stop this kind of behaviour from public officials, because at the end of the day, if there is any abuse of power from them then they need to be made accountable for it.

[john5746]

There is no evidence she used personal email accounts for government business, even from this hacked stuff.

[iNow]

There is no evidence she used personal email accounts for government business, even from this hacked stuff.

 

 

 

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/how-transparent.html

“E-mails from the Palin administration are being withheld from the public and the governor is citing executive privilege," reported Alaska TV station KTUU last month. "With subject lines like ‘Fagan,’ ‘Andrew Halcro’ and even ‘Alaska Ear,’ it makes some wonder how those topics could possibly be policy related; especially since those same e-mails were copied to the governor's husband...Officials say the private e-mails within the Palin administration won't be released.”

 

“Palin routinely uses a private Yahoo e-mail account to conduct state business," the Anchorage Daily News reported a few days ago.

"Others in the governor's office sometimes use personal e-mail accounts too. The practice raises questions about backdoor secrecy in an administration that vowed during the 2006 campaign to be ‘open and transparent.’…

 

"Where you've got a governor apparently using a Yahoo account for state business, that's kind of a complete inversion of what ought to be happening in terms of public records,’ said Charles Davis, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and a Missouri journalism associate professor. ‘E-mail that's public business ought to be done on public accounts that can become public record,’ he said.”

 

Using a personal email account to conduct official business is what officials of the Bush administration -- perhaps most notoriously Karl Rove -- in an apparent attempt to circumvent any subpoenas.

[Pangloss]

If, would, whether, appears.

 

I think there's a point to be made here about whether government officials should use public email accounts for government correspondence, but I think that's a minor, technical issue, not a political issue or a trust issue. Many people simple are not aware of the potential security risks in that area. It's not something that generally affects the average email user, and it's not something that all governments have set policy on yet. My own company just instituted a policy on it earlier this year.

 

If she did something untoward or illegal while using that system, then that's a trust issue and a political issue.

Edited September 18, 2008 by Pangloss
multiple post merged

[iNow]

Her staff were actively trying to determine if personal email records could be subpeoana'd, and after concluding that this was not likely decided that was the best way to communicate issues with the governor. What more do you need exactly before you realize what's happening here?

[Phi for All]

If she did something untoward or illegal while using that system, then that's a trust issue and a political issue.

Do you have any examples of when you would use a system like this for legitimate communications? I haven't been able to think of any reasons beyond not wanting the records to be subject to subpoena, and that implies there is something in them which would implicate those involved.

[ParanoiA]

Yeah, I can see a mandate on communications for the government to follow for security reasons, going forward. But I couldn't imagine instant guilt just because somebody used their personal account, in absence of such a mandate or whatnot.

 

I conducted business over my personal email account on behalf of my company a number of times. Namely because I couldn't get access to my work email from home, and I needed to correspond on a matter from home, so I just used my "yahoo" account. I've even done it a couple of times just because I happened to have that email account open when I wanted to correspond.

 

Anybody know what the emails said? John says there's no evidence she conducted government business anyway. iNow presented a blog where somebody said a newspaper said she uses it for government business. So, is there any evidence or are we trying by forum now?

[Pangloss]

Her staff were actively trying to determine if personal email records could be subpeoana'd, and after concluding that this was not likely decided that was the best way to communicate issues with the governor. What more do you need exactly before you realize what's happening here?

 

Actual evidence? Come on, when somebody makes a statement like that about global warming you're beside yourself in apoplexy. Why is it okay to leap to conclusions here?

 

Do you have any examples of when you would use a system like this for legitimate communications? I haven't been able to think of any reasons beyond not wanting the records to be subject to subpoena, and that implies there is something in them which would implicate those involved.

 

Can I think of any reason why someone would use their personal email preference instead of a governmentally-mandated email system? Are you kidding? Come on, would you even pose that question if it wasn't a political opponent you're talking about? People prefer some email systems over others. What exactly is the great surprise here?

 

If Joe Biden were being accused of using GMail instead of the Senate email system you'd be telling me about how he prefers the GMail interface over the Senate's ridiculous Outlook Web Access client. This is political wrangling, not logical concern.

[ParanoiA]

Well wait a minute though, is it already mandated? If it's already a government mandate, then didn't she just violate it? And isn't that bad?

Edited September 18, 2008 by ParanoiA

[john5746]

Do you have any examples of when you would use a system like this for legitimate communications? I haven't been able to think of any reasons beyond not wanting the records to be subject to subpoena, and that implies there is something in them which would implicate those involved.

 

I had a friend that worked for a county govt. they had a 10mb email restriction, so he used his personal account to send some pictures to a public person who had requested them! I doubt they had this problem in Alaska.

 

I could see gossipy type email that you wouldn't want others to ever see being sent with a different system. Of course, that type of email can provide evidence for wrongdoing as well - especially motive. Until someone says they have actually seen email or someone from her group admit it, I don't regard this as an issue.

 

I bet there are people all over the US deleting email and accounts from Yahoo. Of course, Gmail is safe.

[Phi for All]

Yeah, I can see a mandate on communications for the government to follow for security reasons, going forward. But I couldn't imagine instant guilt just because somebody used their personal account, in absence of such a mandate or whatnot.

But the mandate is *not* absent in this case.

 

I conducted business over my personal email account on behalf of my company a number of times. Namely because I couldn't get access to my work email from home, and I needed to correspond on a matter from home, so I just used my "yahoo" account. I've even done it a couple of times just because I happened to have that email account open when I wanted to correspond.

Completely different. You weren't thinking about subpoenas much, were you? You *had* to use your personal account, and I doubt if anyone at your company would have objected.

 

Can I think of any reason why someone would use their personal email preference instead of a governmentally-mandated email system? Are you kidding? Come on, would you even pose that question if it wasn't a political opponent you're talking about? People prefer some email systems over others. What exactly is the great surprise here?

I think *you're* kidding now. This wasn't a matter of preference. Palin's aide Ivy Frye spoke in one email about how it was a way to communicate that couldn't be audited. If they've done nothing wrong, why worry about an audit?

 

If Joe Biden were being accused of using GMail instead of the Senate email system you'd be telling me about how he prefers the GMail interface over the Senate's ridiculous Outlook Web Access client. This is political wrangling, not logical concern.

Well, you're wrong there. If I found out Joe Biden was using Karl Rove's anti-suboena gimmick, and his aides talked about the secrecy merits of that gimmick, I'd lump him in with Rove and jump ship in a heartbeat. I'd start my write-in campaign for Paul / Kucinich. I'm tired of the secrecy.

 

Well wait a minute though, is it already mandated? If it's already a government mandate, then didn't she just violate it?

Absolutely, but a mandate isn't a law, I guess.

[Pangloss]

If they've done nothing wrong, why worry about an audit?

 

It's a government bureaucracy. That speaks for itself.

 

 

Well, you're wrong there. If I found out Joe Biden was using Karl Rove's anti-suboena gimmick, and his aides talked about the secrecy merits of that gimmick, I'd lump him in with Rove and jump ship in a heartbeat. I'd start my write-in campaign for Paul / Kucinich. I'm tired of the secrecy.

 

K. But that's why the issue is front and center.

[Dave]

If she did something untoward or illegal while using that system, then that's a trust issue and a political issue.

 

Sure, if only it were that simple. But it is now very clear from these hacked e-mails that the idea is make subpoenas and audits of that account hard/impossible to get. Even if the court granted the subpoena request and managed to get them to hand over data (which I imagine would be a lengthy process in the first place), it would be much easier for them to delete the sensitive documents and then claim they were 'accidentally' erased, with no backups kept.

 

There is no defense for these actions.