The death toll rose throughout the day as at least two dozen bodies were pulled from the wreckage and at least one other victim, a teacher from Oaks Christian School in Westlake Village, died at a hospital.
"We want to be honest in our appraisal," Tyrrell said at the scene of the crash, as rescue workers, now in recovery mode, continued to use heavy machinery to untangle the twisted remains of the most damaged passenger car.
"Barring any information from the NTSB, we believe our engineer failed to stop and that was the cause of the accident," she said, referring to the National Transportation Safety Board. "Of course, it is your worst fear that this could happen, that the ability for human error to occur could come into the scenario."
Ms. Palin walks the national stage as a small-town foe of “good old boy” politics and a champion of ethics reform. The charismatic 44-year-old governor draws enthusiastic audiences and high approval ratings. And as the Republican vice-presidential nominee, she points to her management experience while deriding her Democratic rivals, Senators Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr., as speechmakers who never have run anything.
But an examination of her swift rise and record as mayor of Wasilla and then governor finds that her visceral style and penchant for attacking critics — she sometimes calls local opponents “haters” — contrasts with her carefully crafted public image.
Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials.
GOP presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is mocked as an out-of-touch, out-of-date computer illiterate in the latest television commercial from Democrat Sen. Barack Obama's campaign. But what the ad doesn't note is that it has been reported years ago that McCain cannot physically use a keyboard because of injuries suffered as a POW in the Vietnam War.
The new fighting spirit comes as McCain has been gaining in the polls and some Democrats have been expressing concern the Obama campaign has not been aggressive enough. Obama's campaign says the escalation will involve advertising and pushes made by the candidate, running mate Joe Biden and other surrogates across the country.
"Today is the first day of the rest of the campaign," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says in a campaign strategy memo. "We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain's attacks and we will take the fight to him, but we will do it on the big issues that matter to the American people."
The newest ad showcasing their hard line includes unflattering footage of McCain at a hearing in the early '80s, wearing giant glasses and an out-of-style suit, interspersed with shots of a disco ball, a clunky phone, an outdated computer and a Rubik's Cube.
"1982, John McCain goes to Washington," an announcer says over chirpy elevator music. "Things have changed in the last 26 years, but McCain hasn't.
"He admits he still doesn't know how to use a computer, can't send an e-mail, still doesn't understand the economy, and favors two hundred billion in new tax cuts for corporations, but almost nothing for the middle class," it says. It shows video of McCain getting out of a golf cart with former President George H.W. Bush and closes with a photo of him standing with the current President Bush at the White House. "After one president who was out of touch, we just can't afford more of the same."
McCain gets emotional at the mention of military families needing food stamps or veterans lacking health care. The outrage comes from inside: McCain's severe war injuries prevent him from combing his hair, typing on a keyboard, or tying his shoes. ...
After Vietnam, McCain had Ann Lawrence, a physical therapist, help him regain flexibility in his leg, which had been frozen in an extended position by a shattered knee. It was the only way he could hope to resume his career as a Navy flier, but Lawrence said the treatment, taken twice a week for six months, was excruciatingly painful.
"He endured it, he wouldn't settle for less," said Lawrence, who rejoiced with McCain when he passed the Navy physical. "I have never seen such toughness and resolve."
State and local officials began searching for survivors by late morning, just hours after Ike roared ashore at Galveston with 110 mph winds, heavy rains and towering waves. Overnight, dispatchers received thousands of calls from frightened residents who bucked mandatory orders to leave as the storm closed in.
Authorities were frustrated, but vowed to get to the more than 140,000 people who stubbornly stayed behind as soon as they could.
"This is a democracy," said Mark Miner, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry. "Local officials who can order evacuations put out very strong messages. Gov. Perry put out a very strong warning. But you can't force people to leave their homes. They made a decision to ride out the storm. Our prayers are with them."
Sedonia Owen, 75, and her son, Lindy McKissick, defied evacuation orders in Galveston because they wanted to protect their neighborhood from possible looters. She was watching floodwaters recede from her front porch Saturday morning, armed with a shotgun.
"My neighbors told me, 'You've got my permission. Anybody who goes into my house, you can shoot them,'" said Owen.
Raw video from AP on a fire in Galveston during Ike:
An idiot in a bear suit walks along the Galveston beach as Ike approaches:
AP report on Ike:
Air Station Houston HH-65C rescue helicopter crew pulling citizens out of flood waters on a rescue mission along Bolivar Peninsula during Hurricane Ike along the southeastern Texas coastline:
"Let's finish riding out the storm, and this afternoon we'll assess the damage and we'll make sure that the assets, resources get to where they need to be," [Harris County Judge Ed] Emmett said, adding tropical storm-force winds could continue through mid-afternoon.
Hurricane Ike knocked electricity offline for virtually the entire Houston area as it continued to roar across the area today.
CenterPoint Energy said about 90 percent of its roughly 2 million customers were in the dark before daybreak even as the storm continued to pack a 100 mph punch with the eye still near Kingwood as of 6 a.m. That means nearly 4.5 million residents were without power and doesn't include the service area of Entergy Texas.
CenterPoint spokesman Floyd LeBlanc said downtown Houston and the Medical Center, both of which have underground power lines, were the only large areas with reliable electricity. He said CenterPoint had braced for more than half its customer base losing service, and full restoration could take "several weeks."
Entergy spokesman David Caplan said 96 percent of its customers throughout its service area - or 380,000 - are in the dark. Two generating stations in Bridge City and Willis are down, so they and transmission lines have to be back up before crews can focus on restoring power to customers. Caplan says the process could take weeks.
"As soon as it's safe to travel - it's still blowing out there - we will get a couple hundred scouts to go out and do the assessments, either in vehicles or in helicopters, to fly over the lines, see where the damage is and begin to pull together a restoration plan. That could take 24 to 48 hours, depending on the weather."
"Everybody is on their own for now," Mayor Larry Davison said of what was believed to be a small group of people who refused to leave their homes.
Looking out over his submerged city hours before Ike's landfall, Davison said damage would be far worse, especially if winds got over 100 mph or the tide got much higher.
Wearing shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and protective rubber boots, Davison literally led the way for the would-be rescue crew as he waded through water in front of the Mack truck and cleared debris, such as floating wood, tool boxes and barrels.
Police and firefighters who rode in the bed of the high-clearance truck appealed to holdouts to leave in order to save their lives.
There were blunt words for those who wouldn't.
"We asked them to write their Social Security numbers on their arms for us," Police Chief Randy Smith said solemnly.
President Bush said this morning that state and federal officials will work to make sure consumers will not be gouged at the gas pumped because of the storm, CNN reports:
In a brief televised statement, Bush said the Environmental Protection Agency waivers on certain reformulated gasolines were suspended Friday night to make it easier for imports to get into U.S. markets.
"In the meantime, the Department of Energy, the Federal Trade Commission and, I know, the state authorities will be monitoring the gasoline prices to make sure consumers are not being gouged," the president added.
He said that additional generators were being moved into areas without electricity and that other concerns such as water and ice were being addressed.
Bush said he had asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to travel to Texas to review the federal response to Ike. Chertoff was to arrive in Texas on Saturday evening.
CNN also reported that the freighter that had been adrift in the Gulf of Mexico made it through Hurricane Ike safely and was awaiting a tugboat to bring it to shore Saturday morning. All 22 people aboard the Antalina, a Cypriot-flagged freighter, were safe, U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Mike O'Berry said Saturday. It is about 170 miles southeast of Galveston.
Officials along the Louisiana coast are reporting serious flooding from Hurricane Ike.
Now that the winds are calming, rescue teams are starting to venture out and answer calls for help. Hundreds of homes have been flooded. Gov. Bobby Jindal says 160 people were rescued Friday and more would likely need help Saturday.
Lake Charles Mayor Randy Roach says flooding there is worse than in Hurricane Rita three years ago. Ike's storm surge has breached levees and flooded areas still recovering from Hurricane Gustav earlier this month.
Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have cancel campaign events today, including Obama's scheduled appearance on "Saturday Night Live."
Charles Krauthammer, writing in Saturday's Washington Post, notes that it was Charlie Gibson who got it wrong, not Sarah Palin, when asking about the Bush Doctrine:
Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, Gibson grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."
Wrong.
I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of the Weekly Standard entitled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine. ...
He concludes:
If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about the grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda of the Bush administration.
Not the Gibson doctrine of preemption.
Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.
Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.
Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines which come out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few other contradictory or conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.
Jeffrey Ressner of Politico is reporting tonight that Sen. Barack Obama may cancel his scheduled appearance on "Saturday Night Live" because of the potential disaster on the Texas coastline from Hurricane Ike.
Barack Obama is scheduled to appear on “Saturday Night Live” tomorrow night, but he may pull out if Hurricane Ike devastates Houston, Texas, "SNL" creator-producer Lorne Michaels told Politico on Friday. “If it’s serious, it will change everything for us,” he said. “The tone of the show will shift, and it would be inappropriate for the senator to do if it looks in any way like it’s going to be a tragedy.”
In addition, plans are in the works for "SNL" veteran Tina Fey to guest star as GOP vice presidential pick Sarah Palin, but a confirmation of Fey’s participation will come Friday night after she figures out if it will interfere with weekend shoots for her own program, “30 Rock.”
The show had been in contact with Obama earlier this week to go over material, said Michaels. “The things he’s hopefully going to do are morphing daily — it’s comedy, it’s not a platform speech.” As late as Friday afternoon, he was on the phone with Obama advisers going over a new script. “It’s certainly my hope” that he appears in more than one segment, he says, “but that will depend how things go in dress [rehearsal] and whether [he is] comfortable with [the material.]”
The show’s September return to the airwaves will launch with a politically themed skit. Election material will also serve as a heavy component of the “Weekend Update” mock newscast, and potentially two to three other skits will touch on the campaigning. Over the next two months, Michaels said the show’s reliance on political material will depend on what actually occurs on the campaign trail. “The first debate is on a Friday night, and we’ll have some take on it to be sure,” he said.
The Alaska State Senate Judiciary Committee voted 3-2 today to demand the testimony of about a dozen people, including Todd Palin, aides to the governor and heads of state departments in its investigation of whether she improperly fired the head of the state police.
The decision by the Alaska Senate's Judiciary Committee gives an independent investigator, Stephen Branchflower, the Legislature's legal backing to seek testimony from Todd Palin and 11 aides to Sarah Palin.
Branchflower said he had already amassed evidence showing that Palin's husband was "principal critic" of trooper Michael Wooten, who was married to Sarah Palin's sister before a bitter divorce.
The state attorney general and a private lawyer representing the governor have warned they would go to court to quash the subpoenas--raising the possibility of a constitutional clash that could simmer until after the November election.
"It seems like we're getting into a pitched battle here over subpoena powers," said state Senate Minority Leader Gene Therriault, one of two Republicans who opposed the authorization.
But a third Republican, state Sen. Charlie Huggins, joined two Democrats in approving the legal move.
"Let's get the facts on the table," Huggins said.
In July, Gov. Palin fired Public Safety Commissioner Walter Monegan, who had refused to sack Wooten. The trooper already been disciplined with a five-day suspension for several infractions. In 2005, Palin had accused Wooten of threatening her father's life, demanding that state officials take action to remove him from the agency.
Rescuers were forced to abort their effort in reaching 22 men aboard a 584-foot shop adrift in the Gulf of Mexico because of high winds produced by Hurricane Ike.
Petty Officer Tom Atkeson said five Coast Guard and Air Force aircraft were hauling rescue swimmers on their way to the ship but were forced to land in Lake Charles, La.
Atkeson said the planes encountered winds of about 92 mph at the site of the drifting freighter, about 120 miles southeast of Galveston. Such winds are above the safety limits for a rescue attempt, he said.
The freighter, registered in Cyprus, sent out a radio call for help just after 4 a.m. CDT Friday. Initially the Coast Guard said the men on the ship would have to ride out the storm because rough seas made rescue impossible.
The ship, carrying a load of petroleum coke, lost propulsion and steering but there was no indication that the ship was taking on water, Atkeson said.
Atkeson said the Coast Guard was in contact with the crew on the ship, built in 1984, and might be able to relaunch a rescue attempt later.
A woman at TEO's offices in Athens, where it was late Friday night, said company officials were monitoring the situation and were in contact with the crew.
The National Weather Service issued a dire warning to Galveston residents as Hurricane Ike prepares to make landfall either tonight or early tomorrow: Leave or risk death.
"All neighborhoods ... and possibly entire coastal communities ... will be inundated during the period of peak storm tide. Persons not heeding evacuation orders in single-family one- or two-story homes may face certain death."
While thousands have already left the ares, many still are determined to ride the storm out.
Ike is currently a Category 2 storm, but forecasters predict that it will strengthen to a Category 3 storm before coming ashore early Saturday morning between Sargent, Texas, and Galveston. The National Hurricane Center reports that at 11 a.m. Eastern Ike's winds were near 105 mph as its center was about 195 miles southeast of Galveston, and moving west-northwest at 12 mph.
Wholesale gasoline prices on the Gulf Coast moved even further into uncharted territory to around $4.85 a gallon, as refineries anticipated that Ike would incur at least a significant pause in their operations, and at worst severe damage to their facilities.
Gulf Coast wholesale gasoline last traded at around $4.75 a gallon, said Ben Brockwell, director of data pricing and information services. That was up substantially from about $3.25 on Wednesday and less than $3 on Tuesday.
Wholesale prices are what refineries charge retailers before they get marked up further for the consumer.
“The path of the storm has put the entire supply chain under stress from the refinery level all the way to the retail station level,” Brockwell said. “Hopefully it’s a temporary phenomenon, but we won’t know until next week.”
October gasoline futures climbed 6.52 cents to $2.8140 a gallon on Nymex, while the average U.S. retail price for gasoline edged up less than a penny to $3.675 a gallon, according to auto club AAA, the Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express.
Light, sweet crude for October delivery rose 62 cents to $101.49 a barrel in late morning trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.71 to settle at $100.87 on Thursday after dropping as low as $100.10 per barrel. The last time Nymex crude traded below the $100 mark was April 2.
Casey Anthony, the mother of missing 3-year old Caylee Anthony, has been charged with fraud and theft on Thursday, adding to the long list of charges in her case.
The Florida State Attorney's Office has officially filed charges against Anthony, 22, who has been bonded out of jail twice since being arrested on suspicion of a role in her daughter Caylee's disappearance.
Anthony now has 10 charges filed against her, including grand theft, three charges of fraudulent use of personal identification, three counts of forgery of a check and three charges for uttering a forged check.
The recent charges were filed after Casey allegedly stole checks and money from a friend in July. Each count is a third-degree felony, which is punishable by up to five years in prison.
The State Attorney's Office said that these are just formal charges and that Casey already bonded out on these alleged crimes. No arrest will be made.
Casey is currently staying with her parents in East Orlando as she is fitting with a bracelet and placed on house arrest. Prior to her second stint in jail, officials found chloroform and evidence of a decomposed body in her trunk.
GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say "I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?"
PALIN: 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, will be ready. I'm ready.
GIBSON: And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I -- will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?"
PALIN: I didn't hesitate, no.
GIBSON: Didn't that take some hubris?
PALIN: I -- 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.
GIBSON: But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact that you have commanded the Alaskan National Guard and that Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?
PALIN: But it is about reform of government and it's about putting government back on the side of the people, and that has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States.
GIBSON: I know. I'm just saying that national security is a whole lot more than energy.
PALIN: It is, but I want you to not lose sight of the fact that energy is a foundation of national security. It's that important. It's that significant.
GIBSON: Did you ever travel outside the country prior to your trip to Kuwait and Germany last year?
PALIN: Canada, Mexico, and then, yes, that trip, that was the trip of a lifetime to visit our troops in Kuwait and stop and visit our injured soldiers in Germany. That was the trip of a lifetime and it changed my life.
GIBSON: Have you ever met a foreign head of state?
PALIN: I have not and I think if you go back in history and if you ask that question of many vice presidents, they may have the same answer that I just gave you. But, Charlie, again, we've got to remember what the desire is in this nation at this time. It is for no more politics as usual and somebody's big, fat resume maybe that shows decades and decades in that Washington establishment, where, yes, they've had opportunities to meet heads of state.
Sarah Palin on God: GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, "Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God." Are we fighting a holy war?
PALIN: You know, I don't know if that was my exact quote.
GIBSON: Exact words.
PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln's words when he said -- first, he suggested never presume to know what God's will is, and I would never presume to know God's will or to speak God's words.
But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that's a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God's side.
That's what that comment was all about, Charlie.
GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln's words, but you went on and said, "There is a plan and it is God's plan."
PALIN: I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good. I believe that there is great hope and great potential for every country to be able to live and be protected with inalienable rights that I believe are God-given, Charlie, and I believe that those are the rights to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That, in my world view, is a grand -- the grand plan.
GIBSON: But then are you sending your son on a task that is from God?
PALIN: I don't know if the task is from God, Charlie. 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.
Sarah Palin on National Security: GIBSON: Let me ask you about some specific national security situations.
PALIN: Sure.
GIBSON: Let's start, because we are near Russia, let's start with Russia and Georgia.
The administration has said we've got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?
PALIN: First off, we're going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain's running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we've got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep... GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.
PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there.
GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?
PALIN: They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.
Sarah Palin on Russia: We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We've learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.
We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.
GIBSON: Would you favor putting Georgia and Ukraine in NATO? PALIN: Ukraine, definitely, yes. Yes, and Georgia.
GIBSON: Because Putin has said he would not tolerate NATO incursion into the Caucasus.
PALIN: Well, you know, the Rose Revolution, the Orange Revolution, those actions have showed us that those democratic nations, I believe, deserve to be in NATO.
Putin thinks otherwise. Obviously, he thinks otherwise, but...
GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia? PALIN: 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.
But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.
We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.
GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade. PALIN: 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 be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.
And we have got to be vigilant. 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.
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.
His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.
Sarah Palin on Iran and Israel: GIBSON: Let me turn to Iran. Do you consider a nuclear Iran to be an existential threat to Israel? PALIN: I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nuclear weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes.
GIBSON: So what should we do about a nuclear Iran?
PALIN: We have got to make sure that these weapons of mass destruction, that nuclear weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them.So we have got to put the pressure on Iran. GIBSON: What if Israel decided it felt threatened and needed to take out the Iranian nuclear facilities? PALIN: Well, first, we are friends with Israel and I don't think that we should second guess the measures that Israel has to take to defend themselves and for their security.
GIBSON: So if we wouldn't second guess it and they decided they needed to do it because Iran was an existential threat, we would cooperative or agree with that.
PALIN: I don't think we can second guess what Israel has to do to secure its nation.
GIBSON: So if it felt necessary, if it felt the need to defend itself by taking out Iranian nuclear facilities, that would be all right. PALIN: We cannot second guess the steps that Israel has to take to defend itself.
GIBSON: We talk on the anniversary of 9/11. Why do you think those hijackers attacked? Why did they want to hurt us? PALIN: You know, there is a very small percentage of Islamic believers who are extreme and they are violent and they do not believe in American ideals, and they attacked us and now we are at a point here seven years later, on the anniversary, in this post-9/11 world, where we're able to commit to never again. They see that the only option for them is to become a suicide bomber, to get caught up in this evil, in this terror. They need to be provided the hope that all Americans have instilled in us, because we're a democratic, we are a free, and we are a free-thinking society.
GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?
GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be?
PALIN: His world view. GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war. PALIN: I believe that what President Bush has attempted to do is rid this world of Islamic extremism, terrorists who are hell bent on destroying our nation. There have been blunders along the way, though. There have been mistakes made. And with new leadership, and that's the beauty of American elections, of course, and democracy, is with new leadership comes opportunity to do things better.
GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that? PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.
GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?
PALIN: Now, as for our right to invade, we're going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option.
GIBSON: But, Governor, I'm asking you: We have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government. PALIN: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.
GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes? That you think we have the right to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?
PALIN: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell bent on destroying America and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table.
There are reports that traffic is getting tough in the Houston area because of the volume of people evacuating from low-lying areas threatened by Hurricane Ike.
Rapper Kanye West was arrested Thursday morning at Los Angeles International Airport on felony vandalism charges after an altercation with two paparazzi, police reported this afternoon.
The incident, near the airport's Terminal 4, involved the rap star, Don Crowley -- his road manager and body guard -- and a photographer and a cameraman who were taking their photos, airport police said.
The cameras of the paparazzi were damaged in the altercation, police said.
The pair were outside of passenger security screening when the incident took place. Both men were taken to a Los Angeles police station for booking, airport police said.
Some of today's daily tracking polls are available. Sen. John McCain is holding on to his slight lead.
Gallup has McCain up 48 percent to 44 percent. This is a one-percentage-point drop from the past two days.
These results, based on Sept. 8-10 polling, show McCain continuing to ride his post-convention bounce. He has held a statistically significant lead over Obama in each of the last four three-day rolling averages.
In addition, since Sept. 5 -- the first night after the Republican National Convention -- he has outpolled Obama in each of the last six individual night's polling. That consistent pattern in the night-to-night data suggests that McCain has a stable lead for now.
This is McCain's best performance since late April and early May, when he was ahead of Obama in eight consecutive Gallup Poll Daily tracking reports, which included a campaign-best six percentage point lead. In March, shortly after he clinched the Republican Party's presidential nomination, McCain was ahead of Obama in 19 consecutive Gallup Poll Daily tracking reports.
The Rasmussen Reports sees a dead heat, with Obama and McCain pulling in 46 percent of the vote. When "leaners" are included, both candidates have 48 percent.
Data released last night shows John McCain up by two in New Mexico, up by double digits in North Dakota, and up by an overwhelming margin in his running mate’s home state of Alaska. The Palin surge in Alaska has even helped pull embattled Senator Ted Stevens back to a competitive position in his bid for re-election. Presidential polling has also been released this week for Colorado, Florida, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.
Tonight, at 5:00 p.m. Eastern, new polling will be released for Michigan, Idaho, and Wyoming.
Real Clear Politics' average of polls has McCain up by 2.5 percentage points today.
Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain will put their political campaigning aside for a day as the nation remembers the fallen heroes of Sept. 11th. They will make an unprecedented joint appearance at a Ground Zero commemoration and lay a wreath, without making any speeches.
Afterward, they will separately appear at a public form on civic engagement at Columbia University. Several cable news outlets plan to televise the forum live at 8 p.m. Eastern.
"Both parties have used it [9/11] for their own political benefits, but it is risky," Trent Duffy, a former aide to President George W. Bush and a partner at the Washington communications firm HDMK, told Julianna Goldman of Bloomberg. The candidates "realize that the best statesmanship, and hence the best political move, is to not play politics on 9/11."
Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time magazine and a co-moderator of the forum, told Politico.com's Mike Allen that he will encourage the candidates to be “both eloquent and intimate about their beliefs in this area.”
“I hope they will be able to blend the personal with the political on this subject, so that they can talk about what is it in their own lives that made them believe and care about this, as opposed to just saying, ‘Here’s my policy,’
“Their lives have revolved around service. Both men, from an early age, had the idea of service built into their own view of their lives and what they would do with their lives. I think whoever is president will make service a big part of their administration.”
Gas prices at the pump rose significantly today amid concerns that Hurricane Ike will impact oil production facilities in the Gulf and in the Houston area.
The wholesale price of gasoline ranged from $4 to nearly $5 a gallon at the U.S. Gulf Coast on Thursday, said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst of the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J. That is up significantly from about $3 to $3.30 a gallon on Wednesday, Kloza said.
"We're looking at the highest wholesale prices ever for a huge swath of the country," he said. "People understand that regardless what happens with Ike, it's going to shut down the biggest refining cluster for a period of five, six, seven days."
The wholesale price of gasoline is what refineries charge retailers. Retailers then mark up those prices for the customer so they can make a profit — so if these wholesale prices hold, it could mean that pump prices for U.S. drivers easily break through the July 17 record of $4.114 a gallon.
The average U.S. retail price for gasoline was at $3.671 on Thursday, according to the Oil Price Information Service, auto club AAA and Wright Express.
This on a day that crude oil prices slipped. At 12:37 p.m. Eastern, Nymex Crude Future was $101.56 a barrel, which was a $1.02 drop, as reported by Bloomberg.
For the families and friends of the fallen, this memorial will be a place of remembrance. Parents will come here to remember children who boarded Flight 77 for a field trip and never emerged from the wreckage. Husbands and wives will come here to remember spouses who left for work one morning and never returned home. People from across our nation will come here to remember friends and loved ones who never had the chance to say goodbye.
A memorial can never replace what those of you mourning a loved one have lost. We pray that you will find some comfort amid the peace of these grounds. We pray that you will find strength in knowing that our nation will always grieve with you.
The memorial's focus is 184 benches built over a pool of water - 59 of the benches face the Pentagon representing the passengers killed on American Airlines Flight 77. The remaining 125 benches face the opposite direction memorializing those killed within the building. Each is engraved with the name of one of the people killed that day at the Pentagon.
Private contributions of $21 million funded the project.
The memorial's design was chosen through an international competition won by Keith Kaseman and his wife Julie Beckman.
"We wanted it to be like no other simply because that day was like no other," Kaseman said. "It should be both individual and collective in nature, and ultimately it should be imbedded with enough hints and clues that begin to tell the story of the people who lost their lives. And make you think -- but not prescribe how to think or what to feel."
The memorial will open to the public at 7 p.m. Eastern today.
It's been seven years since that awful day that changed our lives. Our pain has not eased, and our memories have not dulled. Living on Long Island at the time, I stood at Ground Zero weeks after the attack. I recall as if it were yesterday how the smoke, and the smell, was still hovering over Lower Manhattan. I remember how I cried as I stood by the ruins. There are so many images of that day that would not go away as I looked at the rubble. Seven years later, they still remain.
I remember the 343 firefighters who climbed the stairwells and who never returned.
I remember the brave passengers on Flight 93 who fought back to their last breathe. We may never know just how brave they were. But we do know that their actions saved countless lives in the ground.
I remember the 125 people in the Pentagon who gave their lives in defense of our country.
All in all, there were 2,974 victims that day. Each going about their daily routine not knowing their fate. There were 246 who died on the four planes; 2,603 in the World Trade Center and on the ground; and 125 at the Pentagon. Authorities never found 24 people. More than 90 countries lost people in the attack.
The New York City Fire Department lost 341 firefighters and two paramedics. The New York City Police Department lost 23 officers. The Port Authority Police Department lost 37 officers. Private EMS units lost eight additional EMTs and paramedics.
Cantor Fitzgerald L.P., an investment bank on the 101st–105th floors of One World Trade Center, lost 658 employees alone.
Their sacrifice should never fade away.
God bless them, and their loved ones who still grieve. So that none among us will ever forget, their names can be found here.
The question of how New Yorkers view their view may seem abstract, trivial, remote, compared with the pain of thousands upon thousands who lost loved ones, friends or colleagues when the World Trade Center towers fell. But for a broad swath of New Yorkers for whom the two towers were primarily the crowning jewel of a cherished vista, the amputated skyline was a daily reminder of loss. The way they have reached accommodation, or not, with the transformed view provides yet another window into the city’s infinitely long process of recovery.
Exactly where it will strike is still any one's guess as the powerful storms starts its slow trek across the Gulf of Mexico. But most computer models show that Brazoria County, south of Houston, is the likely target.
At 11 p.m. Eastern Wednesday, Ike was a Category 2 storm with winds near 100 mph. It was about 676 miles east of Brownsville and was moving northwest at 7 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
"I cannot rule out Ike becoming a very large and dangerous Category 4 hurricane," Jim Rouiller, a meteorologist with Planalytics Inc. in Wayne, Pa., told Bloomberg. "Ike will likely become a major hurricane tomorrow and remain so on Friday as it moves across the very warm waters of the Gulf."
The Chronicle's report continued:
Still, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said he expects special-needs residents to be evacuated Thursday from low-lying parts of southeast Harris County along Galveston Bay, and that anyone else living there would be "strongly encouraged" to leave.
"We are in fact looking at 8- to 11-foot surges along the bay; facing basically hurricane force winds over most of the county and 8 to 12 inches of rain," he said. "All of that combined makes for a very bad Friday night into Saturday."
Voluntary evacuations are in effect for Galveston, San Patricio and Victoria counties and parts of Jackson County, and the city of Corpus Christi, Bloomberg reports. Officials have ordered mandatory evacuations for Brazoria and parts of Matagorda County, according to a statement from Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
Bloomberg also reports on the effect on oil production in the Gulf:
Refineries in Corpus Christi process more than 586,000 barrels of crude a day, representing about 3.7 percent of U.S. capacity, according to Energy Department data.
Some rigs, refineries and platforms shut down by Hurricane Gustav last week are staying closed. About 65 percent of offshore gas production is still shut.
Exxon Mobil Corp., the world's biggest oil company, shut oil wells in the Gulf as it evacuated offshore platforms and began preparing refineries in Texas and Louisiana. The Irving, Texas-based company, in an advisory today on its Web site, said 26,000 barrels of daily oil production and 130 million cubic feet of natural-gas output was halted.
BP Plc, Europe's second-largest oil company, began shutting production from oil and natural-gas platforms in the Gulf today. The London-based company plans to finish evacuating all offshore workers in the region today, it said in a recorded telephone message.
Crude oil for October delivery fell 68 cents to settle at $102.58 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest since April 2.
ABC News has released a few details about Charles Gibson's scheduled interview with Sarah Palin today and tomorrow.
Gibson, who was scheduled to arrive in Alaska on Wednesday, will interview the governor and vice-presidential candidate on "World News With Charles Gibson" and "Nightline" today. The network will broadcast another portion of the interview on "20/20" on Friday. ABC News plans to report on her personal and professional background as well as conduct a live roundtable discussion, which will be hosted by George Stephanopoulos.
Sen. Barack Obama has said he wants to debate issues, not personal attacks. But his surrogates have not received the memo yet. The Democrats seem to be in a serious meltdown, as most party faithful are now starting to voice concerns that the campaign is slipping away.
South Carolina Democratic chairwoman Carol Fowler sharply attacked Sarah Palin today, saying John McCain had chosen a running mate "whose primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion.”
Palin is an opponent of abortion rights and gave birth to her fifth child, Trig, earlier this year after finding out during her pregnancy that the baby had Down syndrome.
Fowler told my colleague Alex Burns in an interview that the selection of an opponent of abortion rights would not boost McCain among many women.
“Among Democratic women and even among independent women, I don’t think it helped him,” she said.
Told of McCain's boost in the new ABC/Washington Post among white women following the Palin pick, Fowler said: "Just anecdotally, I believe that those white women are Republican women anyway."
In the heat of his primary battle with Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama released list of his earmarks. Christopher Drew and Jo Becker of The New York Times reported on March 14 that the senator included a request for $1 million for the hospital that Michelle Obama works. The senator and hospital officials said Michelle Obama had nothing to do with the request.
In other cases, Mr. Obama’s requests benefited political supporters.
His campaign’s list said the senator had secured $1.3 million of an $8 million request in 2006 for a high-explosive technology program for the Army’s Bradley Fighting Vehicle. The list said the program was overseen by General Dynamics.
One of Mr. Obama’s top supporters, James S. Crown, serves on the board of General Dynamics, a military contractor. Mr. Crown is a member of Mr. Obama’s national finance committee.
Mr. Obama also secured $750,000 of a $3 million request for renovation of a space center named for Mr. Crown’s grandfather, Henry Crown, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.
In addition to the University of Illinois, Mr. Obama secured several million dollars for a project at Chicago State University. Emil Jones Jr., the president of the Illinois State Senate and an early and powerful political benefactor of Mr. Obama’s, has been a dogged champion of Chicago State, and one of Senator Obama’s closest friends. A Chicago businessman, James Reynolds, sits on its board.
CNN reports that state records and the organization Taxpayers for Common Sense show that Palin has asked for about $450 million in federal money since she became governor. But she also gets some credit. "As governor, she has, by all records, started to reduce the number of earmark requests ... so it's a downward trajectory by our analysis but still significant earmark requests," Steve Ellis of Taxpayers for Common Sense said.
Sen. Barack Obama, speaking at a high school in Virginia this morning, tried to take the offense by criticizing the McCain campaign for "taking over another election with lies and phony outrage and Swift-boat politics, enough is enough."
Ben Smith of Politico wrote in a blog late this afternoon that McCain spokesman Brian Rogers responded to the response by saying, “Barack Obama can’t campaign with schoolyard insults and then try to claim outrage at the tone of the campaign. His talk of new politics is as empty as his campaign trail promises, and his record of bucking his party and reaching across the aisle simply doesn’t exist.”
Democrats are worried that Obama is getting off track. They feel that every day that the news media is focusing on gaffes and lipstick on a pig is a victory for the Republicans. Obama is slipping in the polls, and this discussion is a no-winner for him, political experts say.
The British comedian appeared to annoy celebrities and some fans when he made a series of risque political and sexual jokes hosting the 25th anniversary show.
But Brand, who called for Americans to vote for Democratic nominee Barack Obama in the presidential elections, claimed censors at the channel had already toned down his routine and vetoed several jokes.
He said: "I had John McCain gags pulled. And they asked me to tone down the gags about Sarah Palin. I wanted to say she was forcing her teenage daughter to have a baby because she is so anti-abortion.
"But also, as a Republican she is pro-execution so she is going to give her the electric chair for being a little slut.
"They weren't keen on that one."
Nevertheless, he did manage to include a reference to George W Bush as a "retarded cowboy" during the routine.
OPEC ministers meeting in Vienna early Wednesday agreed to cut production to 28.8 million barrels a day in the next 40 days, a reduction of about 520,000 barrels a day, OPEC's President and Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil announced.
The move was seen as an effort to cut overproduction in a market that has seen falling prices in crude oil.
Brent crude was down $4.14 to $99.30 a barrel, while U.S. crude lost $3.08 to $103.26. The prices have sunk from a record of more than $147 a barrel last July. Brent crude is one of the most important benchmark crude oils. Two-thirds of the world's internationally traded crude oil supplies are priced relative to it. The benchmark oil is a combination of crude oil from 15 different oil fields in the Brent and Ninian areas of the North Sea.
In other news, the oil exporting cartel announced that Indonesia had suspended its OPEC membership.
"The conference regretfully accepted the wish of Indonesia to suspend its full membership in the organisation and recorded its hope the country would be in a position to rejoin the organization in the not too distant future," OPEC said in a statement.
The Democrats are stepping up their personal attacks on Gov. Sarah Palin, and it starts from the top of the ticket.
Ben Smith of Politico writes in his blog today that Sen. Barack Obama is using questionable references on the stump in regards to his characterization of Gov. Sarah Palin. In this case, he talked today about a "pig.":
Amie Parnes reports from Lebanon, VA:
Obama poked fun of McCain and Palin's new "change" mantra.
"You can put lipstick on a pig," he said as the crowd cheered. "It's still a pig."
"You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink."
"We've had enough of the same old thing."
The crowd apparently took the "lipstick" line as a reference to Palin, who described the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull in a single word: "lipstick."
Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen reported today that the line was used elsewhere:
Democratic Congressman Russ Carnahan on Tuesday – introducing Joe Biden at a campaign event – ripped into Palin’s record and punctuated it with this snarky jab. “There’s no way you can dress up that record, even with a lot of lipstick,” he said. Later in the day, Obama used a variation of the lipstick line, though he was clearly talking about the McCain-Palin reform rhetoric. "You can put lipstick on a pig," he said. "It's still a pig."
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has indicated he supports Sen. Barack Obama as the next president of the United States. In giving his support, Brown said Obama's plan to get the United States out of its housing slump is the key.
"Around the world, it is progressive politicians who are grappling with these challenges....In the electrifying US Presidential campaign, it is the Democrats who are generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times. To help prevent people from losing their home, Barack Obama has proposed a Foreclosure Prevention Fund to increase emergency pre-foreclosure counselling, and help families facing repossession."
Diplomats around the globe are telling reporters that there are indications that North Korea's ruthless dictator Kim Jong Il, 66, may be gravely ill after suffering a stroke weeks ago. The speculation began when Kim failed to show up for a parade today to celebrate the country's 60th anniversary.
"There is reason to believe Kim Jong Il has suffered a serious health set back, possibly a stroke," a Western intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Associated Press. AP also reported:
A senior U.S. official said rumors had been circulating for weeks about the state of Kim's health and his control over North Korea's highly centralized government.
That official said the United States has no independent confirmation that Kim is ill, but that Kim's absence lends credence to reports that he is suffering and may no longer be in a position to command the absolute authority he had wielded.
"What we do know is that he was not at the military parade," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity about the administration's internal assessment of the situation. "That is quite unusual and reinforces a lot of what we've been hearing."
Mark Mazzetti and Choe Sang-Hun of The New York Times reported that American diplomats said there is no clear succession plan in place in the event of Kim's death.
However, the official said, there are few indications that North Korean officials are stepping up preparations for a transfer of authority.
South Korea’s largest daily, Chosun Ilbo, reported Tuesday that Mr. Kim collapsed on Aug. 22, citing an unnamed South Korean diplomat in Beijing. The Seoul government could not confirm the report. The South Korean intelligence agency said it was trying to confirm reports of Mr. Kim’s ill health.
The North’s state-run media have not reported any public appearance by Mr. Kim since mid-August, and speculation was already swirling that he might be in ill health. According to South Korea’s intelligence service, Mr. Kim has chronic heart disease and diabetes.
Gallup announced today that Sen. John McCain is surging with independents, and now has a 15-percentage-point lead in that demographic.
The surge in political independents who favor McCain for president marks the first time since Gallup began tracking voters' general-election preferences in March that a majority of independents have sided with either of the two major-party candidates. Prior to now, McCain had received no better than 48% of the independent vote and Obama no better than 46%, making the race for the political middle highly competitive.
The poll shows McCain with a 52-to-37 preference among independents who are registered voters.
The events on the Republican stage in St. Paul, Minn., from Sept. 2-4 appear to have provided two important boosts to the McCain-Palin ticket.
First, according to the latest USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted Sept. 5-7, McCain has energized his Republican base and, as a result, has potentially strengthened his positioning on Election Day with "likely voters." Second, as the Gallup Poll Daily trends discussed here show, voter movement toward McCain since the Republican convention occurred mainly with independents, thus broadening McCain's appeal beyond the party.
Republicans had already lined up for McCain before the convention started. Now, they are excited, and are joined by more independents than at any other time in the campaign. Those gains may not last -- "bounces" rarely do -- but they enable McCain to launch the next phase of the campaign with the knowledge of what his winning coalition might look like.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has already declared the state a disaster area in order to start the deployment of resources to the 88 counties that might be affected by the storm.
The National Hurricane Center said at 11 p.m. Eastern Monday that the center of the hurricane was near latitude 21.8 north and longitude 89.8 west, or about 20 miles southeast of Playa Giron on the southern coast of west-central Cuba, and about 140 miles southeast of Havana.
Ike is moving west-northwest near 13 mph. It should enter the southeastern Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday. Maximum sustained winds are about 80 mph, making the storm a category 1. The minimum central pressure is 967 mb. The storm is expected to gain strength as it enters the Gulf.
Reuters reported Monday night that state-run Cuban media says eastern portions of the island have experienced widespread damage, including toppled trees, destroyed homes, downed power lines and flooded towns. The area had up to 10 inches of rain, flooding and a surging sea.
The wire service also reported that Cuban television said four people died, including two men who were electrocuted when they tried to take down an antenna that fell into an electric line, a woman who was killed when her house collapsed and a man who was crushed when a tree blew over onto his home.
Brian K. Sullivan and Camilla Hall of Bloomberg reported Monday night that personnel from 10 rigs and 202 production platforms in the Gulf have been evacuated, the Minerals Management Service said yesterday on its Web site. There are about 717 manned production platforms in the Gulf. The report said the price of crude oil for October delivery dropped 60 cents, or 0.6 percent, to $105.63 a barrel as of 12 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices are up 38 percent from a year ago.
Olbermann started off by showing clips of Palin appearing at her former church, the Wasilla Church of God. He criticized the church's programs to pray for homosexuals. "You'll be encouraged by the power of God's love and His desire to transform the lives of those impacted by homosexuality," an insert in the bulletin of the Wasilla Bible Church once said. He also attacked the subject of Palin's prayers, including for the success of a pipeline.
Olbermann then commented on a report that a former pastor at her previous church and a fellow parishioner have said that "worshippers not only they believe in the rapture, and that the Governor Palin has spoken of Alaska of being a refuge for that supposed lifting up of those true-believers, but also they speak in tongues, in other words in words or sounds neither they nor anybody else understands, kind of like FOX News." Olbermann, while stumbling on his words, asked guest Rachel Maddow "should we be terrified?"
Maddow says that while a lot of people's religious beliefs from the outside seem "alarming," Palin needs to be asked if she thinks God is directing her public policy, and does Palin believe in the separation of church and state. Maddow says we (as a nation) are not excited about "extremism."
Criticizing prayer, Olbermann ask "Some of these things addressed to her deity ---Doesn't he/she [referring to God] have better things to do?" Maddow retorts, "Wouldn't God be better at it?" (that is, wouldn't crews be furiously working if Palin prayed for the success of a pipeline).
This is tough for people with Olbermann and Maddow's mindset to understand. But here it goes.
1. Prayer is intensely personal, and the Bible encourages people to be specific in prayer. People pray for healing, they pray for wisdom, they pray for success in activities, in travel and in other matters. It's not a matter for us to decide if Palin's (or any one else for that matter) prayer is appropriate. She was following a sound biblical practice of being specific in her prayer.
2. Presidents have long believed God is directing their public policy in the past. In this area, Maddow should read more of the writings of Lincoln.
3. The question of whether God has better things to do just demonstrates a basic lack of understating of the faith of billions of Christians, who believe that God desires a personal relationship with everyone. When asked how to pray, Jesus responded with what we call The Lord's Prayer, part of which we ask God for "our daily bread" -- a fundamental desire for our personal salvation: the need of bread to survive. God has no better thing to do than to provide us with what we need to survive.
4. Many Protestant Christians believe in the rapture. While there is a debate as to when the rapture might happen, and even if it might happen, the vast majority of Protestants do hold the belief that this will happen near the end times. It certainly is part of Protestant mainstream belief, something most would expect Palin to believe in.
5. Speaking in tongues means speaking in a way or in a language that is not normally understood by the speaker or the listeners. There are 30 million Pentecostals in the United States, and about 130 million in the world. (Ironically, more than the numbers of viewers at MSNBC, which total about 500,000 or so). Pentecostals and charismatic churches are the denominations most associated with the gift of speaking in tongues, as described in 1 Corinthians 14:2 (New Revised Standard Version):
For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit.
Beyond Pentecostal and charismatic churches, there are many Christians in other Protestant and Catholic denominations who believe the practice is a valid form of prayer. Some Pentecostal churches, including Assemblies of God, teach that speaking in tongues is evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit, but it is not essential for salvation and eternal life. Some other Pentecostal denominations teach that speaking in tongues is experienced by everyone who has truly been saved. Other denominations do not put emphasis on the practice.
So, where is the extremism here? At least 10 percent of the American population believe in the gift of speaking in tongues. Many more believe that there will be a rapture. A vast majority of Americans (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) believe in the power of prayer. But few, less than a million, bother to watch Olbermann's show. So, Keith and Rachel, who represents the mainstream? The hundreds of millions of people of faith or the hundreds of thousands of MSNBC viewers?
A nearly six-year-old Tribune news story discussing United's plans for bankruptcy was reposted on the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and headlined on Bloomberg this morning, causing United Airlines stock to plunge 75 percent in minutes.
The stock, which had closed Friday at $12.30 a share, hit a low of $3 a share before the confusion was cleared up. The stock was trading recently at $8.97, down $3.03 for the day.
After being alerted to the issue Monday morning, the Chicago Tribune removed the story from its online archives which are also accessed by other Tribune Co. newspapers. The South Florida Sun-Sentinel's version of the story was the one that was cited by Bloomberg. The story did not appear on the Web site of the Chicago Tribune.
The original story, published Dec. 10, 2002, appeared the day after United Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and discussed the company's strategy for emerging from bankruptcy. Though the text of the story appeared on the Sun-Sentinel Web site Monday, the date on the story had been changed to Sep. 6, 2008, according to Joseph Schwerdt, deputy managing editor-interactive for the Sun-Sentinel.
United Airlines officials were obviously angry, and demanded a retraction. "United continues to execute its previously announced business plan to successfully navigate through an environment marked by volatile fuel prices and continues to have strong liquidity," United Airlines said in a statement.
The story was posted at 10:53 a.m. It is not clear how it made its way onto the web with a posting date of Sept. 6, 2008.
Micheal Lev, business editor ot the Chicago Tribune, said his staff was scrambling to figure out what was going on with United's stock. He said at the time that he had not heard of the CNBC report that a six-year-old story about United filing for bankruptcy had run on the his paper's Web site. "We've written nothing on United Airlines today," said Lev.
According to news aggregation site SmartBrief.com, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, a Tribune paper, was the first to run the old story about United. It was posted to its Web site at roughly 1 p.m. Sunday.
Sun-Sentinel Online Editor Joe Schwerdt pulled the story off his site shortly before noon this morning, in response to a call Tribune made to Sun-Sentinel editor Earl Maucker.
"I literally just got word a couple minutes ago that there was problem," says Schwerdt. He says he did not know how the old story was posted as new and was unsure if any other Tribune papers ran it. He declined to discuss details about how his paper publishes stories on weekends. ...
It was unclear whether the old story appeared on the front of the Tribune's site, as some initial reports indicated. Tribune says it did not. Regardless, investors who found the story would have a hard time knowing it was six years old. No date of original publication is listed on the story page on either chicagotribune.com or sunsentinel.com. The only date on the pages was today's: Sept. 8, 2008
On Romenesko's journalism blog, Maucker says reports that an United Airlines bankruptcy story resurfaced on his paper's website on Sunday are wrong. "We never posted the story. We never did anything." A research firm apparently found the old story through a Google search and then posted it to Bloomberg, which caused UAL investors to panic, Romenesko says.
Mary Schlangenstein of Bloomberg reports the news report was posted online by the Sun-Sentinel and was picked up by Income Securities Advisors Inc., said Richard Lehmann, president of the Miami Lakes, Florida-based research firm. Income Securities Advisors distributed the report on the Bloomberg terminal before retracting it and issuing a correction. Bloomberg News also ran a headline citing the Tribune story after the Income Securities Advisors report.
There is growing evidence of a post-convention bounce in the national polls for the Republican presidential ticket of Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin. A number of recent polls show them with a lead over Democrats Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
John McCain’s support among registered voters increased six percentage points from immediately before the GOP convention to immediately after. That convention bounce leaves him with a five-point lead over Barack Obama in the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking update, 49% to 44%.
In the first national polling results based entirely on interviews conducted after the Republican National Convention, McCain attracts 47% of the vote while Obama earns 46%. When "leaners" are included, it’s McCain 48% and Obama 47%.
Last Tuesday, Obama’s bounce peaked with the Democrat enjoying a six-percentage point advantage. Before the two conventions were held, Obama had consistently held a one or two point lead over McCain for most of August.
Real Clear Politics' average of polls has McCain up by 3.2 percentage points.
Most pollsters attributed McCain's gains to a traditional post-convention bump in popularity, as well as Palin's performance in her speech at the convention, which was well received by social conservatives and evangelicals.
MSNBC, the left-wing basket case cable network, is in full meltdown mode. After several weeks of on-air sniping and tantrums from the Spittle Twins, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, executives at NBC apparently staged an intervention.
They will no longer anchor political coverage or the debates. The fair and balanced savior?
MSNBC has finally come to its senses and taken Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews off anchor duty -- and Olbermann's reaction perfectly illustrates why it was necessary to do so.
Throughout the election season, Olbermann and Matthews have co-anchored event coverage even though both function as opinion journalists in their primary roles at the network -- Olbermann as host of Countdown and Matthews as host of Hardball. MSNBC president Phil Griffin has said this arrangement worked because the two men "put on different hats" to anchor straight news coverage.
But no one seems to have briefed Olbermann on the whole hat-switching thing. He capped off two weeks of embarrassing convention hijinx by launching into a lecture on Thursday night after the Republican National Convention featured a tribute to the victims of 9/11. Olbermann decreed the video "inappropriate" and exploitative.
According to The New York Times and The Washington Post, that character break led directly to this weekend's decision to have David Gregory anchor all upcoming election coverage.
Olbermann claims he initiated the conversation about taking himself out of the anchor chair -- but he also tells the Times, "I found it ironic and instructive that I could have easily said exactly what I did say, exactly when I did say it, if I had been wearing a different hat, and nobody would have taken any issue."
MSNBC’s announcement that it is replacing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews with David Gregory as anchors for its main political events (the upcoming presidential debates and election) vividly illustrates several long-obvious facts. First, nothing changes the behavior of our media corporations more easily than vocal demands and complaints from the Right, which petrify media executives and cause them to snap into line. ...
Second, in response to media criticism that the press is insufficiently substantive and adversarial to political power, the claim is frequently made that media outlets are simply driven by the profit motive, and that their programming choices are nothing more than a by-product of ratings. But in MSNBC’s case, that is plainly untrue. Back in 2003, they actually canceled their highest-rated program, Phil Donahue’s show, for purely ideological reasons — because, at a time when the establishment “liberal media” were systematically amplifying the Government’s pro-war views and excluding anti-war views, that short-lived MSNBC show was one of the only venues in America where one could hear anti-war viewpoints, and NBC’s fear of angering the Government and the Right clearly caused them, first, to impose extreme and unusual restrictions on the show’s content, and then to cancel it altogether.
Third, this episode demonstrates what Eric Alterman documented several years ago: that the greatest and most transparent myth in American politics is that the U.S. has a “liberal media.” That is a myth that is maintained, first and foremost, by defining anyone who isn’t Rush Limbaugh as a “liberal.” Hence, people such as the wife of Bush official Dan Senor (Campbell Brown) is a “liberal,” as is Alan Greenspan’s wife (Andrea Mitchell), along with establishment-worshipers such as Rush-Limbaugh-admirer Brian Williams, right-wing-talking-points-spouting Charlie Gibson, and anyone who writes for the war-enabling New York Times and Washington Post.
Perhaps nothing demonstrates this absurd dynamic more than the painfully inane perception that Chris Matthews — for years a prime target of liberal media critics — is some sort of “liberal.”
Finally, and perhaps most notably of all, Olbermann’s role as anchor somehow destroys the journalistic brand of both MSNBC and NBC, while Fox News continues to be deemed a legitimate news outlet by our political and media establishment. Fox does this despite (more accurately: due to) its employing Brit Hume as its main anchor — someone who is every bit as partisan and ideological as Keith Olbermannn is (at least), who regularly spews the nastiest and most vicious right-wing talking points, yet because he’s not a liberal, is deemed to be a legitimate news anchor.
And finally, a blogger at Daily Kos has this to say, which is backed up by hundreds of comments on the blog:
NBC bent over and took one for the GE team because of complaints from Republicans. So kudos to NBC...America can't have too much fair and balanced news coverage.
