Legion of Angels News Archive

(CNN) – Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin suggested Tuesday that it would be Sen. Barack Obama’s policies that would spark the international crisis that Sen. Joe Biden has said would be likely within months of Obama taking office.

At a fundraiser Sunday night, Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, said that after taking office, “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. … We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.”

He added that the Obama administration would need people to stand with it at the time because “it’s not going to be apparent initially … that we’re right.”

“I guess we have to say, “Thanks for the warning, Joe,’ ” Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, told supporters during a rally in Reno, Nevada.

She speculated that instead of the crisis being generated by another world leader, as Biden suggested, an international crisis could be sparked by Obama’s willingness “to sit down with the world’s worst dictators without preconditions,” to send troops into Pakistan to try to kill Osama bin Laden and other top al Qaeda officials, or to draw down U.S. troops in Iraq.

In response to earlier criticism of the comments from Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential candidate, Obama-Biden campaign spokesman David Wade issued a statement saying:

“Sen. Biden was making it clear that history has shown presidents face challenges starting on day one, and with our nation fighting two wars and 21st century threats abroad, we know that we need steady leadership in tumultuous times, not the erratic lurching and stubborn ideology of John McCain.”

But Palin zinged her Democratic counterpart, saying, “I guess the looming crisis that worries the Obama campaign right now is Joe Biden’s next speaking engagement.”

Trailing in polls nationally as well as in battleground states, the Republican ticket in recent days has been aggressively jumping on any opening given to it by the Democratic presidential ticket.

To reach voters in critical swing states, Palin and McCain have also increased the number of interviews they have done with local media outlets, in part to blunt the Obama campaign’s huge cash advantage.

On Sunday, the Obama campaign announced it raised a record $150 million in contributions in September.

McCain on Tuesday continued to hammer Obama for the comment the Democrat made to “Joe the plumber” in which — as he defended his decision to raise taxes on couples earning more than $250,000 a year while cutting taxes for people with lower incomes — Obama said that “when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

“After months of campaign trail eloquence, we’ve finally learned what Sen. Obama’s economic goal is. … Sen. Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the pie than he is in growing the pie,” McCain told supporters during a rally in Bensalem, Pennsylvania.

McCain also accused Obama of waffling on which team he was backing in the World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and the Tampa Bay Rays, which begins Wednesday.

“It’s kind of like the way he campaigns on tax cuts, but then votes for tax increases after he’s elected. Or the way he says he backs the middle class and then goes and attacks Joe the plumber after he’s asked a tough question,” McCain said.

Obama, however, has said he was rooting for the Phillies and has never said he was also rooting for the Rays.

When he was joined by a number of Rays at a rally in Florida on Monday, Obama said, “I am a unity candidate bringing people together, so when you see a [Chicago] White Sox fan showing love to the Rays, and the Rays showing some love back, you know we’re onto something right here.”

On Tuesday, Obama keep his focus on Florida and the economy, the issue that is foremost on voters’ minds. Polls also suggest that voters have more trust in Obama’s handling of the current financial crisis than in McCain’s.

During an economic roundtable discussion in Lake Worth, Florida, Obama called the crisis “the worst since the Great Depression” and blasted the Bush administration for not doing enough to help “Main Street.”

“While President Bush and Sen. McCain were ready to move heaven and earth to address the crisis on Wall Street, President Bush has failed to address the crisis on Main Street — and Sen. McCain has failed to fully acknowledge it,” Obama said. “Instead of commonsense solutions, month after month, they’ve offered little more than willful ignorance, wishful thinking and outdated ideology.”

The nation’s economic woes appear to be affecting the presidential race more than at any previous time this election cycle, according to a poll released Tuesday.

More than three-quarters of voters who responded to a new survey by CNN and the Opinion Research Corp. say the United States is in a recession, and 40 percent say another depression is likely to hit the country within a year.

According to the new poll, 61 percent of registered voters say the economy is extremely important to their vote, a jump of three points since June and more than 10 points higher than the next most important issue on voters’ minds: terrorism.

Source — CNN

With colleges back in session and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin on board as the Republican vice presidential nominee, social conservatives are intensifying efforts to woo young voters, a demographic they once all but conceded to the Democrats.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has long enjoyed a huge edge among college students and voters in their 20s. Republicans now are seeing their first real chance to make inroads with that group. The key: Young voters may see the 44-year-old Gov. Palin as in tune with their concerns in a way that Sen. John McCain, her 72-year-old running mate, could never be.

“She reminds me of my friends,” said Allyson Wartick, 20, a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

Just two weeks ago, the mood on campus “was definitely, ‘Obama is the cool place to be,’” said Jennifer Kacerosky, 21, a senior at the University of Florida. This past weekend, though, she went to a football game sporting a McCain-Palin button, and “it was, ‘Where’d you get that? I need that!”

Gov. Palin’s down-to-earth image and her family travails — a pregnant teenage daughter, a baby who she says keeps her up at night, a schedule so busy she says it’s often macaroni and cheese for dinner — appeal to young voters who say they had a hard time relating to Sen. McCain. He’s been in Congress longer than many college students have been alive; he’s a hero from a war they know only from history books; he admits to being clueless about email and texting and Google. Sen. McCain has just 312,000 supporters listed on his Facebook site. Sen. Obama has 1.7 million.

Polls taken after the Republican convention don’t show Sen. McCain cutting into the Democrats’ lead among young voters; his support hovers around 33% in that group. But conservatives aren’t giving up. They plan to focus their youth effort on a few issues, including abortion. Although voters of all ages rank abortion quite low as a political priority, polls show the under-30 crowd is receptive to strict limits on abortion, and young evangelicals — potential swing voters this election — are more conservative than their parents on the issue.

Sen. McCain opposes abortion in most circumstances, but some conservatives view him as less than forceful. They see Gov. Palin as their true champion. She supports a total ban on abortion except when continuing the pregnancy would kill the mother.

At a string of Christian rock concerts in the swing states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the nonprofit group Redeem the Vote plans to mobilize voters by interspersing the music with calls to end legal abortion.

The antiabortion group Students for Life, meanwhile, has announced plans to flood YouTube with videos urging young people to activism in the fall campaign.

In Florida, conservative student groups plan a statewide “I Vote Pro-Life” rally later this month. Elsewhere, young antiabortion activists plan to talk up Gov. Palin’s position through phone banks and door-to-door visits. Emily Espinola, 23, a senior at Franciscan University of Steubenville, in Ohio, expects her grades this fall will suffer. But it’s worth it, she said, if it boosts Gov. Palin to the vice presidency. “I love her so much,” Ms. Espinola said.

Democratic activists say Gov. Palin’s appeal to youth is real. “It means we have to work that much harder,” said Laurie Rubiner, a vice president at Planned Parenthood’s political arm. Still, she views abortion as a winning issue for the Democrats. A Pew Research Center poll from 2006 found that 46% of people age 18 to 30 believe abortion should be banned outright or permitted only in a few circumstances. But that still means more than half support legal abortion. And many young people know someone who has made the choice to end a pregnancy; some 600,000 abortions a year are performed on women under 25.

John Green, a political analyst who focuses on religious voters, said the right’s optimism made sense: “It’s certainly plausible that Republicans could recover some of the youth vote, especially among evangelicals and serious Catholics.” The question, he said, is whether they have enough time to take advantage of Gov. Palin’s appeal.

Sen. Obama has spent well over a year building ties to young voters and college campuses. Young voters are notoriously hard to get to the polls, unless they’re repeatedly contacted in person. “It’s not clear,” Mr. Green said, “that the McCain campaign has the infrastructure.”

Source — The Wall Street Journal

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin left open the option Thursday of waging war with Russia if it were to invade neighboring Georgia and the former Soviet republic were a NATO ally. “We will not repeat a Cold War,” Palin said in her first television interview since becoming Republican John McCain’s vice presidential running mate two weeks ago.

Palin told Charles Gibson of ABC News that she’d favor including Georgia and Ukraine, both former Soviet republics, in NATO despite opposition by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Asked whether the United States would have to go to war with Russia if it invaded Georgia, and the country was part of NATO, Palin said: “Perhaps so.”

“I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.

Pressed on the question, Palin responded: “What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against … We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.”

She added: “It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.”

Palin spoke the same day Putin insisted that Russia has no intention of encroaching on the sovereignty of Georgia, following a brief war that left Russian troops in firm control of two breakaway regions. Putin also aggressively defended the decision to send troops to Georgia, saying Russia had to act after Georgia attacked South Ossetia last month.

On other matters, Palin said she “didn’t hesitate” when McCain asked her to be his running mate, a surprise selection that shook up the presidential race.

“I answered him ‘yes’ because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate,” said the 44-year-old Palin, who has been in office less than two years.

Questioned about whether she felt ready to step in as vice president or perhaps even president if something happened to the 72-year-old McCain, Palin said: “I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, we’ll be ready. I’m ready.”

Gibson also read Palin a comment she made in her former church — “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God” — and asked whether she thought the United States was fighting a holy war.

Palin said she was recalling Abraham Lincoln’s words when she made the comment and said: “I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.”

She said she didn’t know if her son Track who is headed to Iraq was on a mission from God.

“What I know is that my son has made a decision. I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer,” Palin said.

Source — Yahoo!

FORT WAINWRIGHT, Alaska - Sarah Palin proposed NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, at risk of putting the U.S. in conflict with Russia, and declared her readiness for high office Thursday as she took a cautious step out of the protective bubble she’s been in since joining John McCain’s ticket.

“You can’t blink,” said the first-term Alaska governor, asserting in an ABC News interview that she is prepared to be vice president and take on the weight of the presidency should it ever come to that.

It was her first extended interview and followed days of preparation by McCain’s campaign for the foreign policy neophyte, who was scarcely known outside her state and political circles until McCain selected her.

Now a figure of intense national interest who has helped McCain pull even or ahead of Democrat Barack Obama in polls, the 44-year-old Palin has been limited to stages and stump speeches, with little spontaneous interaction with voters — a star on camera who has been sheltered from questioning to the point of appearing cosseted.

Her interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson is the only one scheduled for her to date.

“We will not repeat a Cold War,” she said. But she said she favored including Georgia and Ukraine, former Soviet republics, in NATO despite opposition by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Asked whether the United States would have to go to war with Russia if it invaded Georgia, and the tiny country was part of NATO, Palin said: “Perhaps so.”

“I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.

McCain also has talked a tough line in defense of Georgia, while speaking of a role for NATO in less explicit terms. He said last month that NATO should “begin anew the discussions about a membership track for both Georgia and Ukraine.”

Palin said she didn’t hesitate when McCain asked her to be his running mate.

“I answered him ‘yes’ because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink,” she said. “So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.”

In the interview, Palin said she’s never met a foreign head of state.

Afterward, she spoke at a deployment ceremony for her son Track’s Army brigade, soon going to Iraq, and described the mission as “defense of America, in America’s cause. And it’s a righteous cause.”

She did not single out her son and was restricted by the Pentagon from making political remarks on the military base. She appeared in her capacity as governor.

The ceremony honored Fort Wainwright’s 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team. The brigade, a 4,000-soldier unit that includes Private First Class Track Palin, is heading to northern Iraq at the end of the month for a yearlong assignment. Track, 19, is Palin’s oldest son.

He will provide security for his brigade’s top officers, an assignment that is expected to take his unit to Diyala, the fourth most violent of Iraq’s provinces.

Maj. Chris Hyde, brigade spokesman, said: “He doesn’t want to be known as the governor’s son. He wants to pave his own route in life. I have to say, I admire him for it.”

In her speech to the Republican National Convention, Palin drew huge cheers when she announced that her son’s brigade was readying for Iraq, and she’s talked about his deployment many times since.

Palin had not done interviews since the first and only one she gave to People magazine on the day McCain introduced her as his vice presidential choice.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said earlier this week that Palin will do more interviews “when we think it’s time and when she feels comfortable doing it,” and asserted: “She’s not scared to answer questions.”

In the ABC interview, Palin was asked about a comment she made in her former church that “our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God” and whether she thought the United States was fighting a holy war.

Palin said “I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.”

And she said she did not know whether her Iraq-bound son was on a mission from God.

“What I know is that my son has made a decision,” she said. “I am so proud of his independent and strong decision he has made, what he decided to do and serving for the right reasons and serving something greater than himself and not choosing a real easy path where he could be more comfortable and certainly safer.”

Palin arrived in Alaska on Wednesday to a warm homecoming from a crowd of more than 2,000. It was her first stop without McCain.

She’s expected to rejoin him next week and spend much of the fall campaign at his side, even as Democratic running mate Joe Biden campaigns independently of Obama. Palin has proved a powerful draw at McCain’s rallies, and keeping them together limits media access to her.

Source — Yahoo!