Behold, Caribou Barbie from the fine folks at College OTR.
Comes with everything you see here: Dead caribou, M-16, snowmobile, sexy librarian glasses. She even talks with such phrases as: “I’m a pit bull with lipstick!” “My family is off-limits” and “What is it that the VP actually does?”
- There’s a Facebook group with 26,000 members called “I have more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin.” Members talk about living next to Greeks or studying Spanish. You need an account to visit the spot.
- Best joke of the week: What’s the difference between Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney? Lipstick.
The Gotcha Award: Karl Rove talking about Obama’s potential VP selection, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine.
This one gets me every time. Watch the explanatory hand gestures and finger pointing. It makes it much easier to understand the concept.
Enjoy! I’m off for a day of zen…
Mudflats 
I loved how Cindy tried to say Palin has more foreign policy, because Alaska is closer to Russia.
Is it that easy to sway people?
what fun
wow. i think this is proper to post with the Cindy McCain video.
Kay Bailey Hutchinson is on CNN still saying Palin has more executive experience. They are following the script to a tee!
like such as
New at the McSame Store:
Visit this site and watch the seconds, minutes, hours, days roll along…. till SoapOperaSarah talks to the press:
Sarah Palin is the Afraid of the News Media
http://countemdown.blogspot.com/
There’s even a widget you can download so you can watch this thing roll minute by minute on your own blog or wherever you like!
lmao thank you AK…brilliant as usual
That Caribou Barbie is awesome!!! 🙂
I made an icon of that auspicious title for Livejournal – people are welcome to use it, but give me credit (click my name here to get to my LJ):
AK residents: Is Palin a big family or a common surname in Alaska?
Was Elayne M. Palin related to Todd Palin?:
Social Security Death Index
Name: Elayne M. Palin
Born: 6 Nov 1945
Died: 19 Oct 2003
State (Year) SSN issued: Alaska (1961 )
What’s the difference between Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney? Lipstick. I love it thanks so much. It is funny at first, but the fact that it is TRUE is scary as hell.
Why not make a point of “Federal Experience” of representing more than 1 million people. “World experience. ”
Conservative types can often craft issues with words that hook you into accepting the wrong premice.
Like comparing community organizer to Mayor. Some people rush to explain the value of community organizing. Its apples and oranges.
Compare mayor of 5000 to – State Legislature and
Governor of 600,000 to US Senate
Sportscaster to community organizer
I guess sports caster is sorta like community organizer, except community organizers are actually good for something.
OK. Here is what is bugging me today. Remember George Allen? He was gone in an instant for saying one word. Boom-gone. Now we have this convoluted pyschodrama going on and the no one sees it as politically fatal. I’m just not buying it. Something else is going on. What?
ReneND, I don’t remember George Allen.
I feel like Debbie Downer but I wanted to get everyone’s thoughts—Obama, in an interview with Stephanopolous, was trying to be gracious and say that while people have tried to imply he’s a Muslim, McCain has not done with directly. However, he said it very badly, like “McCain has not talked about my ‘Muslim’ faith.” (The quotes around Muslim are, of course, invisible in speech!) Then Stephanopolous tries to correct him, “My CHRISTIAN faith?” and Obama accepts that momentarily before seeing the confusion and says, “What I mean is he hasn’t suggest that I’m a Muslim.” I see this clip (embedded here, with Obama’s correction—the one that’s going around doesn’t contain Obama’s correction) becoming hugely viral and doing absolutely no good for Obama. Does anyone think I’m overreacting?
Let’sGetReal (08:22:32) :
Kay Bailey Hutchinson is on CNN still saying Palin has more executive experience. They are following the script to a tee!
Caught her last week towing the line. So sad, they just roll over, what’s the difference between a politician and prostitute? Integrity.
Cindy sounds like a scatter brained ditz in this one. I didn’t think she did well with her speech either. Sounded like she was reading off the the teleprompter and she missed the emotional tone she was supposed to convey. Bad acting.
Matthew Rettenmund (08:39:28):
Jeeez…
He also fumbled the “surge” thing with O’Reilly and continues to pay for that waffling response.
http://bgladd.blogspot.com/2008/09/surge.html
Comments welcome.
George Allen ran for Senator in VA and was caught using the word “macaca” (a racial slur to refer to an young Indian-American who was videotaping his speech). Jim Webb, a conservative democrat and former sec’y of the Navy won the seat in 2006.
McCain’s wife knows how to manage the environment that supports her husband. Palin’s first tutoring lesson was about keeping Mrs. McCain happy. But in the end, Gov. Palin and Mrs. McCain will duke it out for control. I’m betting on Mrs. McCain… and hoping she can do the job (on Gov. Palin) before the election.
Looking at the Spiro Agnew mess, I think the presidential spouse played an enormous role in disposing of Agnew.
Caribou Barbie LOL!
How come she doesn’t come with a breast pump?
oh i want me one of those dolls..see if my voodoo still works..
MR, people will believe what they want to believe. I don’t think he would have gone in intercity Chicago in a CHRISTIAN basement to be a community organizer.
Muslim’s don’t hide the fact they are Muslim!
People who believe this…have already formed their opinion and you can’t sway the opinions of others who believe this.
AKM – ENJOY YOUR DAY OF ZEN – you deserve it! Thanks again for providing us with your perspective as a well-informed Alaska insider!
Also, thanks for the laughs this morning!
How about a GI John doll that sings Ba Ba Ba Bomb Bomb Iran?
I feel like Debbie Downer but I wanted to get everyone’s thoughts—Obama, in an interview with Stephanopolous, was trying to be gracious and say that while people have tried to imply he’s a Muslim, McCain has not done with directly. However, he said it very badly, like “McCain has not talked about my ‘Muslim’ faith.” (The quotes around Muslim are, of course, invisible in speech!) Then Stephanopolous tries to correct him, “My CHRISTIAN faith?” and Obama accepts that momentarily before seeing the confusion and says, “What I mean is he hasn’t suggest that I’m a Muslim.” I see this clip (embedded here, with Obama’s correction—the one that’s going around doesn’t contain Obama’s correction) becoming hugely viral and doing absolutely no good for Obama. Does anyone think I’m overreacting?
—————
No, I don’t think you’re overreacting. I saw the show. It’s important to make sure the CORRECT clip circulates. Heck, when I’M running on no sleep and stress I can make much worse mistakes! Difference is, I’m not running for office and no one is scrutinizing my every word!!!
Only the right wing dingbats who are out there in somewhere in the ozone
layer will pay any attention that video…….and any one with even a lick of sense
will understand exactly what he ( Obama ) was talking about.
The idiots who seize upon this as ” proof ” that Obama is a Muslim are too far gone at this point to ever get them back anyway.
When asked by Bob “puff-ball’ Schiefer this morning when Palin would be available for a press interview…..McBush said “in a few days”………..a few days is less than week……..right ????????? I say just so they can’t say “sexism” ….let her go on Rachel Maddow’s new show!!!!!
How about fake baby bump accessory? Ok mabie yhat was uncalled for but I couldn’t help mysick sense of humor.
Blue Idaho….lol!
Caribou Barbie is a must for my collection and I’ll add a detachable baby bump to make it complete.
BobbyG:
Where’s the Fumble?
Except not Stating Clearly, as none of the pols are, that the ‘surge’ did Not Succeed!!!!
There’s still some 10,000 troops In-Country than before this so called ‘surge’, the Government Is Not Functioning and the Elections have been moved way back also trouble even getting Iraqi’s to register, that very american democracy, the government is going after the ‘awakenings’ which is what brought down the violence as did the blastwalls around the neighborhoods, before the ‘surge?’ even started, and I could keep going.
What the ‘surge’ was Didn’t Succeed, Period!!
It’s just a name for the same crap we did in ‘Nam and I was a part of that, but at the time of so called turning us back into ‘Advisors’, ’70-’71, under Nixon!!
Just went to the College OTR site and here’s one of the comments under the Caribou Barbie pic:
‘She also needs the “sold separately” Joe Liberman tutoring playset and Alaska State Legislature Investigation Playset (extra attorneys not included) ‘
Let’sGetReal (08:38:34) :
ReneND, I don’t remember George Allen.
________________________
George Allen and his Macaca moment.
You’re missing something!!!! You’re missing the strings with our very own Ken-Doll Rove manipulating her mouth.
Hi Folks,
This is a link to an article written a couple of years ago about why Republicans REALLY don’t want Roe overturned. It’s their key to continued power. In fact it’s their only key . . .
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200606/roe
And that’s what Petraeus has been saying in Diplomatic Speak!!
somebody posted the rant from democraticunderground here.
i think its fake, b/c conservatives wouldn’t call the chimp, “the chimp.”
but its kind of funny.
my favorite line?:
“I am deeply concerned about a comment on numerous conservative blogs about choosing McCain Palin because Mr Palin is cute. I agree. So was Goebbels. So was Attila the Hun. So was Caligula. And Eva Braun was a real dish.”
so was marie antoinette.
http://www.graphicsmash.com/comics/wonderella.php?view=current
Laugh away.
MSNBC Obama speech is on!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Most don’t call bush ‘the chimp’, if we can help it,’ it Lowers Chimps To His Level!!
what’s going on you ask? the media has to maintain the illusion that there is a legitimate race between two parties, that one of them is not an empty suit.
we heard endless discussions of whether the democratic party could “come together after a terribly divided primary” but not word one about the terribly divided republican party. the truth is that the democratic party never was “terribly divided” — the differences between the obama and clinton were primarily style and/or emphasis, whereas the republicans have a complete mess on their hands, a party fractured on social and economic issues, not to mention george w. bush (who they even left out of their horrifying video montage of 9/11/01).
the thing that i found particularly repulsive about the GOP convention that got zero coverage was the schizophrenic bouncing between chatter about unity across party lines and demonizing anyone not on the far right. you can be sure that if someone even began to point out that demonization, clips of the unity chatter would be thrust forward to “neutralize” the truth that to republicans if you are “on the left” or a democrat, you are not a true american.
in this election campaign the republicans have upped the ante on who and who is not “a true american.” i am unamerican now not just because of my party affiliation but because i had the audacity to work as a community organizer. i was president of a boston neighborhood association and with the other members of the board and the association we worked hard to keep city and state government and business interests from trampling the lives of the residents of our little neighborhood. but to the mccain/palin crowd the important people in that equation are the mayor and governor. people in the neighborhood association? bupkus.
mccain this morning on “meet the press” tried to back away from the attack on people who volunteer their time for their communities by saying that he “thought” palin was “just responding to attacks on small-town mayors,” leaving the impression hanging in the air that SHE wrote the speech and that he and his campaign had no part in it, and that he thought community organizers are essentially decent people.
mccain did the same thing essentially as he did after the fallout from the paris ad — he minimized the offense (“well, she was ONLY talking about obama” in this case and “well, i thought it was funny” in the case of the paris ad), trivializing the debate that he and his party started in the first place when it became clear they are on the losing end of the argument.
right. now about that bridge …
Thats right baby the failed policies of the last 8 years and the retards hero george bush and they want 4 more because they pick a women VP from left feild??
I dont think so!
ENOUGH!!
NO McCain and NO PALIN!!
GO OBAMA/BIDEN!!! 08
OH yeah Barrack tell them like it is!!!
MSNBC the acceptance speech is on guys!! :))
8 is ENOUGH!!
LOL love it.
What does it say about your judgement when you think the george bush is right 90% of the time??
I dont know about you but I am not willing to take a 10% chance on change!!
awe commercial.
Haha, that is awesome… that pink snowmobile is too much!
check out: GetYoursorGoHome.wordpress.com
http://getyoursorgohome.wordpress.com/
LOL 74% of germany would vote obama 11% mccain the world is watching america!!
10 Weird Facts You Should Know about Sarah Palin:
http://hottiesinthenews.blogspot.com/2008/09/sarah-louise-heath-palin-weird-facts.html
you guys MUST see this one !
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/sarah-palins-churches-and_b_124611.html
Karen Marie- thanks for that thoughtful response. So why are the poll numbers so close? The media can’t manipulate the polls to that degree-or can they.
lol….I live a train ride through the tundra of Northern Canada, to the Bering Strait. One could ostesibly walk across…and be in Russia. So…if I take that train, then maybe I could be your VP? Come on guys…we have all been here together for 11 days now…you KNOW me…can I?
lol…I am getting so worked up my spelling is bad.
protus- i was overseas when Obama was. the people of the world are supporting Obama.
when i got home, i saw so-called conservatives on tv mocking it, trying to make it seem as though it was more of a reason to vote mccain.
on another note: i am not a hi-techie- but i saw buchanan on that fateful friday call palin one of his “pitchfork people”
i think that one oughta go around the u-tubes.
Hey, I pulled my car up to the front of International Terminal at DFW airport once to pick up my son! Guess I have more “foreign policy” experience that Sarah Palin, too.
laurie for veep
ReneND (09:17:14) :
Karen Marie- thanks for that thoughtful response. So why are the poll numbers so close? The media can’t manipulate the polls to that degree-or can they.
It depends on where you poll.
The country is divided in half basically.
I can tell you right now what to watch for this election.
Colorado, New Mexico & Michigan. I beleive if obama wins those the worst he can do is a 269 tie which means win!!
He doesnt need ohio or florida.
So why are the poll numbers so close? The media can’t manipulate the polls to that degree-or can they.
—————————
The polls are not reflecting new voters, people with only a cell phone. Lots of both of those this season, but they are not showing up in the numbers.
Man hes soo good at making things clear.
Why do they even try to spin it??
Its quite obvious Obama’s plan is more about THE PEOPLE of the country.
And McCains is more about the Business People of the country.
Kay Bailey Hutchinson would have been a more appropriate pick for McCain. Only problem is, she’s pro-choice.
I saw the clip with George too and was waiting for Obama to correct the confusion, which he quickly did because he thinks on his feet, but I was wondering how it would play (have no doubt Fox will use it as they like). Meet the Press did not even do a roundtable today (great interviews with Biden and Friedman) and I thought THis Week’s roundtable was soft and sweet on SP and how “popular” she is. David Brooks was actually better at bringing out some trash (like trailer trash descriptor) and inside scoop (like Repubs are assuring him she is smart and hard-working and will get up to speed as she watches MSNBC, calls her daughter to tell her not to turn on TV, and then gets back to work). The women of these past two weeks (like Martha and Cokie) are disappointing me more than the men because I expect them to provide that sense of doubt, to raise questions. They can do it more legitimately without the sexist card being pulled…My observation of how the MSM are handling this obvious joke of a nominee is so enlightening- it shows better how we got duped on the reasons for going into war. They seem to play only softball.
On a good note, I thought Obama and Biden both did well. I like their laid back demeanor re: SP and the way they give her credit as a POLITICIAN- meaning she is good at the game, not necessarily that she is qualified to lead.
Ciny Insane, I mean McCain’s gestures reminded me of the gesture fishermen make… ” I once caught a fish THIS BIG “.
Yeah Palin is an expert because “Russia is this close” to Alaska
Probably we should be saying, ” do you want Cindy Insane’s husbands finger to be ‘this close’ to the button?
Didnt Kilkenny say Sarah was unemployed for 3 years after she was mayor. What kind of executive experience was she obtaining then?
BobbyG (08:42:09) :
All Obama needs to say is this: As long as we still have troops in Iraq, I’m not declaring Mission Accomplished again just so I can prove that I am write in hopes of winning this election.
I’m going to change gears here and ask that you forward this to your Veteran Friends. We need them to know the score – btw, most of us DO UNDERSTAND THE SCORE, but after last week’s selective show of veterans, it is important to underscore the FACTS. Many thanks, and Let’s ALL BLESS AMERICA.
To my Veteran Friends –
I have listened intently to both our primary Parties over the past couple of weeks, and feel compelled as an American to write to you and ask that we, collectively, vote for our Country, the principles in which our Country was founded, and the principles which caused you to nobly enlist to serve this great Nation of ours. I came to this year’s Presidential race somewhat apathetic and believed that neither Party really represented my views. Both Candidates now have had their opportunity to voice what they believe in and how they would spend the next four years as President. As Thomas Paine said 232 years ago, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” We each have a personal responsibility to ourselves and to our children to maintain our democracy by casting our ballot on Election Day.
The Republican Party spent at least 50% of their time this past week highlighting Mr. McCain’s heroic experience as a POW. From my personal count, Mr. McCain mentioned the phrase “POW” no less than 46 times during his acceptance speech. They spent 99% of their time touting their military expertise and applauding the Iraqi “surge” with the other 1% on “drill, baby,drill.” So, let’s look at the facts and determine who is really the most naïve on foreign policy and supporting our troops and our Country.
In Mr. McCain’s Acceptance Speech for the Republican Party, he stated: “ I’ve fought for the right strategy and more troops in Iraq, when it wasn’t a popular thing to do.”
1. On November 29, 2002 on CNN’s Late Edition, Sen. McCain said, “We’re not going to get into house-to-house fighting in Baghdad. We may have to take out buildings, but we’re not going to have a bloodletting of trading American bodies for Iraqi bodies….I don’t think it’s easy, but I believe that we can win an overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.”
In contrast, Obama made a prominent speech around the same time, October 2, 2002, in which he said, “But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history. “I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences. I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of Al-Qaeda.” Obama correctly foresaw the consequences of the biggest foreign policy blunder in American history.
DO ANY OF US TAKE AWAY THE COURAGE IT TOOK MR. OBAMA TO STATE THESE LOGICAL WORDS DURING THIS TIME OF EXTREME EMOTION AND PAIN FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE? WHAT “SHOCK AND AWE” HE MUST HAVE GENERATED WITHIN THE CONGRESS? This is a LEADER to stand for what is right, when it is not most popular.
2. Where does Mr. McCain really stand on supporting our Country, our Troops, and the American people?
John McCain skipped close to a dozen votes on Iraq, and on at least another 10 occasions, he voted against arming and equipping our troops, providing adequate rest for the troops between deployments and for health care or other benefits for our Veterans. This compilation is thanks to the website: http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org
a. September 2007: McCain voted against the Webb amendment calling for adequate troop rest between deployments. At the time, nearly 65% of people polled in a CNN poll indicted that “things are going either moderately badly or very badly in Iraq.
b. July 2007: McCain voted against a plan to drawdown troop levels in Iraq. At the time, an ABC poll found that 63% thought the invasion was not worth it, and a CBS News poll found that 72% of respondents wanted troops out within 2 years.
c. March 2007: McCain was too busy to vote on a bill that would require the start of a drawdown in troop levels within 120 days with a goal of withdrawing nearly all combat troops within one year. Around this time, an NBC News poll found that 55% of respondents indicated that the US goal of achieving victory in Iraq is not possible. This number has not moved significantly since then.
d. February 2007: For such a strong supporter of the escalation, McCain didn’t even bother to show up and vote against a resolution condemning it. However, at the time a CNN poll found that only 16% of respondents wanted to send more troops to Iraq (that number has since declined to around 10%), while 60% said that some or all should be withdrawn. This number has since gone up to around 70%.
e. June 2006: McCain voted against a resolution that Bush start withdrawing troops but with no timeline to do so.
f. May 2006: McCain voted against an amendment that would provide $20 million to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for health care facilities.
g. April 2006: McCain was one of only 13 Senators to vote against $430,000,000 for the Department of Veteran Affairs for Medical Services for outpatient care and treatment for veterans.
h. March 2006: McCain voted against increasing Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes.
i. March 2004: McCain once again voted for abusive tax loopholes over veterans when he voted against creating a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veterans’ medical care by $1.8 billion by eliminating abusive tax loopholes. Jeez, McCain really loves those tax loopholes for corporations, since he voted for them over our veterans’ needs.
j. October 2003: McCain voted to table an amendment by Senator Dodd that called for an additional $322,000,000 for safety equipment for United States forces in Iraq and to reduce the amount provided for reconstruction in Iraq by $322,000,000.
k. April 2003: McCain urged other Senate members to table a vote (which never passed) to provide more than $1 billion for National Guard and Reserve equipment in Iraq related to a shortage of helmets, tents, bullet-proof inserts, and tactical vests.
l. August 2001: McCain voted against increasing the amount available for medical care for veterans by $650,000,000. To his credit, he also voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts, which he now supports making permanent, despite the dire financial condition this country is in, and despite the fact that he indicated in 2001 that these tax cuts unfairly benefited the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
So there it is. Don’t let a few pictures of our treasured military personnel sway you and your emotions from the Republican Convention. You know the score. John McCain is a former military veteran who likes to talk a big game when it comes to having the support of the military. Yet, time and time again, he has gone out of his way to vote against the needs of those who are serving us in our military.
If he can’t even see his way to actually doing what the troops want, or what the veterans need, and his record clearly shows this, then how can he be a credible commander in chief?
We have many veterans who were not able to come home, marry into great wealth that funded the beginning of a political career. We are proud of Mr. McCain for his good fortune. However, our great Country has veterans who have lost their families, their jobs, their homes when they returned from service. They need medical care, and cannot get it. They need education, and are denied.
No one that I know would ever take this away from Mr. McCain his POW status and we all applaud him as a hero from a war nearly 50 years ago. But just using one period of his life as the common theme should not be considered the entirety of his ability to run the Free World. Clearly, his record shows he is not.
PJ (09:26:34):
Kay Bailey Hutchinson would have been a more appropriate pick for McCain. Only problem is, she’s pro-choice.
_________
And,
“Life Begins at Conception”
How noble. Never mind the insurmountable practical problems with that.
http://bgladd.blogspot.com/2008/04/diploid-dave-et-al.html
Maybe McSame and Palin will start up the FBCI – Federal Bureau of Coital Investigation.
Polls:
En avant Obama / Biden !!!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/battleground.html
Enjoy your day of Zen MukRaker. I think you are going to need it
in the week ahead!
hey Mud- email me- enigma4everATEarthlinkDOTnet, I have a question- I am trying to figure out how many houses the Gov has? and where is the 3rd- need your investigative skills please – stop by watergatesummer- thanks….keep up the great work, still sending folks here- great blog….
If you don’t mind, I’d like to add my little picture entitled, It’s More Than Lipstick to the mix.
When you watch Cindy McCain………..she is living proof……..peroxide causes brain damage !!!!!!
Oh thanks Harley. That youtube has me freaked out. Again-vetted?
Hell ya you go barrack you go!!
thank you msnbnc for replaying this at this time!!! 😀
What are the chances of Biden having minor ‘heart trouble’ if the numbers start lookoing bad for Obamba and Hilary getting drafted to the ticket? Looks like Palin is drawing female voters for some unknown reason. Probably the people who don’t read and only watch the 30 minute nightly new and see cover of magazines in the supermarket.
If the Palin bounce does not fade in the next 3 weeks BO needs to reassess everything about the campaign. I am still hoping that something bad comes out and sticks to Caribou Barbie. She is new and fresh and attractive so people love her without knowing anything about her.
10 weird facts about Sarah Palin you should defenatley know!
http://hottiesinthenews.com
The morning SP was announced Kay Bailey Hutchison was live on CNN to give her reaction (not knowing who it would be or course but thinking she could speak to it whoever the choice) and she said, “I don’t know much about her.” and then resorted to platitudes (I am sure John thought….She probaby…) It was so clear they all got blind-sided (I am sure KBH was angry) and now they have all gotten “on message.” ANyway, this clip should be used and replayed. I would see if I could find it myself but I am not savvy with that.
I was hoping someone would replay Obama’s speech as a comparison to what took place this week. I don’t think there would be many takers for a replay of McCain’s speech.
your very welcome
if any of you have a website or a blog, you can add this really cool ” palin watch widget ”
it much nicer than some others I have seenhas links to ” questionable palin stuff ” with it
I added it
The length of this presidential contest is unprecedented. Because it started so early, Obama’s camp has had almost 2 years to build a cohesive, coordinated messaging platform built on “McCain = 4 more years of Bush” and “Change We Can Believe In.”
If the election were held two months ago, I believe Obama could have won it.
But instead, we must wait for two more months.
My biggest concern: Media and messaging saturation. Obama’s campaign has been beating the McCain=Bush drum for so long, that the message no longer packs the same power, especially since McCain has decisively divorced his bid for the white house from the past 8 years.
Enter Palin power and a sudden reformist platform. The GOP base is becoming energized at precisely the right time for an election.
What can Obama’s camp do to counter this sudden “surge” of messaging from McCain?
Stay on message, stay on target. but add a new rhythm section called: “Too Little, Too Late”.
Karen,
MSNBC played McCain’s speech first.
peroxide causes brain damage !!!!!!
So does the Overuse of going under the knife, Plastic, while tring to look younger, still wondering if she’s got a ‘boy toy’ hidden in one of the homes.
Listen to the arrogance of the republicans saying palin doesnt have to answer any questions or do interviews.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/05/no-questions-palin-wont-t_n_124256.html
Let’sGetReal (09:49:28) :
Karen,
MSNBC played McCain’s speech first.
thats even better 😉 then the people can see the real difference.
Obama’s speech is replaying on MSNBC.
Ugh! How is it possible that the polls could show this race as tied or almost tied? It is simply incredible. And embarrassing.
Don’t you chills when you hear Obama’s speech! It’s the same everytime I hear Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech! Awesome!
Just saw a great line worthy of a bumper sticker or t-shirt:
McCain/Palin ’08: Bridge to Nowhere
AKM—I am loving your blog, including all the comments it draws! Keep up the great work!
Oh man look at this crap.
“So Sambo beat the bitch!”
This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.
“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.
Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”
http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/09/05/alaskans-speak-in-a-frightened-whisper-palin-is-%E2%80%9Cracist-sexist-vindictive-and-mean%E2%80%9D/
MSNBC – Did you see Gallup Tracking Polls?
michiganvoter (09:56:23) :
Ugh! How is it possible that the polls could show this race as tied or almost tied? It is simply incredible. And embarrassing.
————————
The polls are showing that if the election were held today, Obama wins in a virtual electoral vote landslide.
Obama 301
McCain 224
Ties 13
http://www.electoral-vote.com/index.html
McCain 48%, Obama 45%
oh blah shes on MSNBC now and the whole speech and attack mode bs.
Weird Sarah Palin Fact 8)
In modern US political history, it appears that the longest a candidate for President or Vice President took to hold a press conference is 10 days. That’s held by Thomas Eagleton, who was asked to be George McGovern’s 1972 running mate. Palin looks set to break that record if she fails to hold a press conference by the end of Monday. A minor miracle may be the only thing stopping that. Andrew Sullivan sums it up best when he asks, “This is a pitbull with lipstick? More like a cowering chihuahua.”
I changed the channel
Ooops!
Weird Sarah Palin Fact 9)
Scrap weird fact number 8, Andrew Sullivan, alerted by a reader now says that Thomas Eagleton faced the press on CBS Face the Nation the day after he announced. “What is happening with Palin is without historical precedent.”
Better joke of the week, from Bill Maher: What’s the differenct between a hockey mom and a pit bull? You can neuter a pit bull.
One more time with gusto.
The Gallup and Rasmussen daily trackers are popular vote indicators ONLY.
The President is elected in the electoral college. Obama has been surging in electoral votes for over two weeks.
If the Republicans are so confident of Sarah Palin’s experience, why is it that they are hiding her from the media. Obviously they think they have a big job ahead of them to get her into a position where she does not embarass them when speaking without a script. What “Experienced” candidate would anyone hesitate to put in front of the press. If you’re truly experienced, you should be a spokesman(woman) for the campaign. This says a lot and I don’t understand why the Media is not addressing it.
For you fans of classic Broadway musicals…John McCain and Sarah Palin in My Fair Lady:
http://zaiusnation.blogspot.com/2008/09/pygmailion-revisited-how-to-put.html
Some of the readers’ comments are hysterical.
Ana Gama
you know whats really interesting??
McCain has to win: NV, MT, ND, SD, IN, OH, VA, NC, NH and FL to tie
If obama wins just CO based on that map of barely states he ties.
So McCain needs 10 of em. Obama needs 1 of em.
I had to turn her off the voice is just killing me.
michiganvoter (09:56:23) :
Ugh! How is it possible that the polls could show this race as tied or almost tied? It is simply incredible. And embarrassing.
It’s the electoral college that counts in US elections.
Takes 271 to win
Currently
Obama -243
McCain -184
It’s down to fighting in swing states with many combinations available
to put Obama over the top. Those states are being aggressively campaigned
in and will be thru the remaining 58 days.
I think the magic number is 270 😉 if its possible to get that?
Mudflats, maybe you should add this Jon Stewart clip to your Sunday Funnies!
What a bunch of hypocrites!
Protus!
Exactly! You get it.
All the serious analysts have acknowledged that Obama has many ways to win, while McCain is really boxed in. He does not have much margin, and fewer ways to get to 270.
Now that said, Obama supporters can’t lose focus or be completely distracted by the shiny object that Palin is becoming.
Ah…. it’s a campaign expense! Of course!!
From the Sunday morning paper gossip column…
http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/27941064.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUUss
A woman believed to be a campaign worker came into Gaviidae’s Pacifier looking for something dressy, but not too dressy, for a 5-month-old. The woman said she had tried Macy’s and Saks but had no luck.
Reflecting on the customer, Jon told me Thursday that there were clues the clothing was being purchased for Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s baby: “I made some assumptions after [the campaign aide] asked me for advice for kids of other ages. I was [also] suspicious that she’d be running around shopping on a RNC credit card.”
Jon recommended the finely knit layette from Egg and mismatched striped/dot socks by Trumpette, which Wing thinks she noticed on TV “peeking out at the ankles.”
michiganvoter
I just want to let the people of my home state of michigan know.
WE WILL DECIDE THIS ELECTION.
Get out the VOTE!!!
Obama/Biden 08!
Love Caribou Barbie. I also want a Caribou Ken and a Caribou Skipper, complete with a Caribou Cadillac and a Caribou Health Clinic and Lie-berry!!
The longer she avoids press interviews, the better. We all get to imagine Miss Sarah studying really really hard 24/7 to learn how to be, what?, the potential VP with super duper potential to be Ms. Prez. Nothing screams competence like having to take an impossible crash course in civics and world history while all the protective menfolk exhort the nasty nasty media to back away from the fair but oh so tough damsel. Please.
AK, one of the first comments on this blog has a social security number! Better get that out of here!
Protus
So McCain needs 10 of em. Obama needs 1 of em.
Not sure what map you are looking at and there are several versions.
CNN shows 243,
fivethirtyeight.com show Obama with 308
Real Clear shows him with 238
They all rely on different formulas based in polling in each state that is
then factored based on trends etc.
I think we’d all be wise to look at the worst case scenario in order to not
become to complacent. Stay angry and keeping fighting in way you can
for Obama & Biden
Donate. Volunteer. Vote.
http://www.Obama08.com
Obama is in much better shape than Kerry was at this time in 2004.
Go to http://www.electoral-vote.com and click the link on the right side “This day in 2004.”
Great photo of Caribou Barbie. You Rock! Or should I say you RAKE!
This note from Gloria Steinem is worth the read. Like that link to Deepak Chopra’s analysis – this speaks volumes. We have to make sure that anyone on the fence gets loads of intelligent info soon!
~~~
By Gloria Steinem
September 4, 2008
Here’s the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing — the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party — are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women — and to many men too — who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the “white-male-only” sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.
But here is even better news: It won’t work. This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.
Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for — and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”
This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can’t do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn’t say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden’s 37 years’ experience.
Palin has been honest about what she doesn’t know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, “I still can’t answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?” When asked about Iraq, she said, “I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.”
She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn’t know it’s about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate’s views on “God, guns and gays” ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.
So let’s be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can’t tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.
Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.
I don’t doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn’t just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn’t just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn’t just echo McCain’s pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.
So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, “women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,” so he may be voting for Palin’s husband.
Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.
Republicans may learn they can’t appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.
And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.
This could be huge.
Gloria Steinem is an author, feminist organizer and co-founder of the Women’s Media Center. She supported Hillary Clinton and is now supporting Barack Obama.
AnaGama,
With this bump though, do you think those polls will go up also? Just wondering if this is possible.
Echoing bwilder!
Sign up to take action in this campaign at http://www.barackobama.com.
Voter registration deadlines are less than a month away in many states. Here in Michigan, the deadline is October 3.
If we are going to win, it’s going to take everyone contributing something. Money, time, phone calls, door knocking.
Proud2BUSA (09:01:59) :
You’re missing something!!!! You’re missing the strings with our very own Ken-Doll Rove manipulating her mouth.
~~~
That should be the stay puff marsh mellow man from the “Ghostbusters” movie. XD
Article Harley cited is great!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/sarah-palins-churches-and_b_124611.html
Everyone should digg it
Palin Hypocrisy Videos being pulled from youtube.
Some links to clips from Jon Stewart juxtaposing inconsistent statements from right wingers, are being deleted from youtube:
“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Viacom International Inc. ”
Others remain, but some bloggers need to update their now dead links…
this one ( with commercial ) works
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=Sarah-Palin-Gender-Card
LGR,
There is no doubt that McCain has gotten a bump from his convention. It’s already shown up in the daily trackers, which is where you would see the first indication of tightening in POPULAR votes. I don’t think his bump has solidified any swing state, nor shored up any weak Republican state. State polls that have been factored into the electoral vote trackers have shown no softness in Obama’s numbers.
Does anyone else find it ironic that the repugs had to bypass all the qualified women in their party to be their VP nomination because they are all Pro-choice? They had to go all the way to Alaska, nominate a woman with no qualifications to be President and ignore all the baggage she comes with just to find a woman who would say she opposes abortion in ALL cases (including rape and incest).
They had to by-pass the qualified women in their party and pander to their minority right-wing extremist base just to get THEM motivated. How the hell can they expect to get anyone else motivated????
A must see:
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/bloggers/david-knowles/
Reading through your posts, I still cannot believe McCain chose Palin. She is the epitome of the “agents of intolerance” described by John McCain. There is a reason the religious right are in throes of religious ecstacy. She is one of theirs. A true right wing nutjob that attends churches that teach doctrines such as generational curses…check out my blog…I posted a few Thoughts from Experience regarding the AOG and right-wing zealot churches like it…peace
Oh. That’s Why I’m A Democrat.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-willis/oh-thats-why-im-a-democra_b_124569.html
The Democratic party, for better or worse, believes in a Frank Capra/Jimmy Stewart view of the world. It says time and time again that through our collective might we can improve the nation, and as a byproduct the world. It is optimistic to the point of being almost corny. The party looks as the world as it is, and says “Gosh darn it everyone, let’s roll up our sleeves and clean up this mess.” It is no coincidence that the current leader of the party, Barack Obama, is the sort of guy you can imagine saying “by golly” and not in an ironic way.
By contrast to the Democratic sunshine, the Republican party is night. Their view of the world is one in which everything is just a shade of negative, and that is the cold heart underlying the cynicism of speakers like Sarah Palin, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitt Romney. They see a world of despair and depression and they wallow in it. The Republican party and the conservative movement that supports it is all about being the snarky guy in the corner playing the angles and making a buck off the foibles and failures of others. For a few it promises the spoils of war – both ideological and real war – but for the rest it just offers a way of wallowing in darkness without any optimistic movement towards a better day.
That reminded me, of just why I am a Democrat. As imperfect and disorganized as they may be, I am a part of a group of people who wants us to move forward to something greater no matter how unattainable perfection may be. Cynicism and nihilism is bad on an individual level and even worse collectively. There are downsides to optimism (regular disappointment is one of them) but it is a far better thing to make a footstep in the positive direction rather than to embrace the darkness and never have hope.
here’s another you tube worth watching…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-qevraCQUc&feature=dir by Lisa Nova
Also a very negative review of Gov Palin in the Sept 6th edition of The Economist magazine of all places.
It is a good source for rebuttals with GOP ers.
Love the Caribou Barbie! I’m taking a day away from Palin and playing Spore. I’ll be updating my blog on my thoughts on it throughout the day as I play. All Palin, all the time=migraines.
Is anyone in the Obama campaign or the media planning to set up clock indicating how many hours, days, and minutes from the acceptance speech before Palin conducts an interview in a serious news publication? FIXED News did this until Obama spoke with one of their “journalists” as I recall.
Did you just see CNN’s investigative reporting on Palin’s facts? It was reported by Jim Vandel. We should all write to CNN. We who have studied these issues so intently know that the baggage Palin brings with her is not so easily dismissed. On every issue, this reporter made the lie seem passable. He said that every governor goes for earmarks, and it’s nothing unusual. Never dealing the issue that she claimed to be a crusader against earmarks! It was not investigative reporting at all. They’re making it seem like it’s the Democrats that are making a big deal on this. What’s wrong with CNN??? MSMBC is just as bad, but we can count on Keith and Rachel to be blunt. CNN’s phone # is 404-827-1500, fax=404-827-1784, per your earlier posting. Their phone line is closed till 8:00 a.m. EST. Keith Oberman, where are you?
ReneND:
Think maybe the Pubs want to lose this election because the economy is about to tank and they want the Dems in power when it goes blub, blub, blub?
ocliberal (10:23:54) :
“Does anyone else find it ironic that the repugs had to bypass all the qualified women in their party to be their VP nomination because they are all Pro-choice? They had to go all the way to Alaska, ”
Not ironic at all…for eight years they have relied not the extreme right wing, religious minority of their party to win their elections. While Palin has now
inspired that minority, there is a difference this year and I think the notoriously
complacent Democratic party is angry like never before and unwilling to let this minority of radical religious fundamentalist have their way again.
Radical Fundamentalists is exactly what they are. Kind of like the Taliban –
they may have some different rules but in the end it is about religious male leaders wrestling for power and controlling the lives of women.
check out mike’s searches, just click on “mike” yes, i am shamelessly asking other to check out what I wrote today, but I’ve faithfully attended chruches like Palin’s, and they are absolutely cultlike, they develop cult personalities in their pastors, who regularly have “words” from God, and believe me, if those “words” don’t line up to the Bible, if the pastor is popular, or if he/she is quite charasmatic, people don”t search their own bibles to find out if it is accurate. Palin’s religious views are dangerous, deceptive, violent and warmongering, with a bunch of greed and self-serving idiocy to go along. Do you honestly believe Jesus would cut funding for special needs education by 62% and then tell a crowd of people as well as 40 million Americans that watched, “I am your friend.” Like my dad used to say, “with friends like that who needs enemies?”
….because she is nothing more than eye-candy for the doddering old men who run that Party.
DO THESE QUOTES SOUND FAMILIAR TO YOU?:
In the same way, the Government of the Reich, which regards Christianity as the unshakable foundation of the morals and moral code of the nation – HITLER.
“The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!”
– Adolf Hitler
“The German people are not a warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war, but does not fear it. It loves peace but also loves its honor and freedom”
– Adolf Hitler
OH man!!! this is freaking good stuff here 😉
LMAO!!
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184084&title=the-best-fking-news-team-ever
McCain on Palin on Face The Nation
SCHIEFFER: …said the other day that the only constitutional job of the vice president is to be ready to become president at a moment’s notice, and he said flatly, “She is not ready.” How do you answer him?
Sen. McCAIN: Well, let me say first that, in all due respect to any commentator, this is the most popular governor in America. She has a clear record of doing what Americans want first and uppermost, reform. Reform. She’s not only talked about it, but she’s done it. And she took on the people in her own party. She took on a sitting governor of her own party and she reformed–and they passed ethics and lobbying reform. And they–and she gave money back to the taxpayers and they cut spending. They did the things the Americans want–she did the things they–that Americans want most. So in all due respect to any of the critics, what we want is the change in Washington. Who better in the political landscape could do that than Governor Sarah Palin, whose whole life had been engaged in that, taking them on and winning? I’ve taking them on and won less than she has.
—–
SCHIEFFER: These are his words, not mine.
Sen. McCAIN: Sure. Oh, I understand.
SCHIEFFER: He says, “Barack Obama is the least qualified presidential candidate in living memory.”
Sen. McCAIN: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
SCHIEFFER: But he says when you picked Palin…
Sen. McCAIN: Mm-hmm.
SCHIEFFER: …the case against Obama, that case evaporates.
Sen. McCAIN: Well, again, I–again, in respect to many of the critics–and I understand that criticism, it’s part of the business. But I also would like to say that she’s not only excited our base that you pointed out, she’s excited Americans all over this country. We’ve been campaigning together, the electricity has been incredible. And I’d like to say it’s all because of a charisma injection on the part of John McCain, but it’s not. They’re excited about this reformer, this lifetime member of the NRA, the person who’s a point guard. She has it. I mean–and I’m sure that Governor Palin has failings and I’m sure she’s made mistakes, because she’s had a long career, from city council to mayor to governor. But the fact is she’s kind of what Americans have been looking for. And again, in all due respect to any critic, I think being mayor is a very important job nowadays, especially the way America’s hurting. There’s people who are mayors right now who are saying, “Hey, there’s an abandoned house over on this street, the people have
left it. What are we going to do?” You know, “How are we going to provide people with the goods and services they need with declining budgets?” So all I can say is I think that her experience and her background not only qualifies her, but brings to Washington a kind of an energy and a fresh wind that maybe is necessary in our nation’s capital.
===========================
Anyone get the feeling he’s still trying to convince himself?
Here’s his reasoning as to why she is ready:
-She’s popular
-She’s a reformer
-She’s a lifetime member of the NRA
-She’s a point guard!?!?
-Notice he says that she was a city councilor, mayor, and governor only to justify that she has made mistakes not really to answer the readiness question.
-She’s has been a mayor
Lifetime NRA member?!? Point guard?!?! Since when has it becomes important that the president know how to shoot anything?!?! He’s actually trying to convince us that a mayor is qualified to be president. Wow! And you would think that he would work on a better answer – right? – to try to put a shine on this fertilizer. He didn’t even bother. He’s winging it! Is he serious? He’s interviewing for the President of the United States, not the Grand Poobah of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes. I mean come on. At least try to make us think we’re overreacting to Sarah Palin.
her experience and her background not only qualifies her, but brings to Washington a kind of an energy and a fresh wind that maybe is necessary in our nation’s capital.
Maybe?!?! There he goes again! He’s telling us he’s running on change, but actually he just saying it because it looks like it might work. He and SP have real integrity problems.
If SP has so much executive experience, in fact more than Barack Obama, why is she being kept carefully hidden away from the press? Why isn’t she on all the Sunday morning talk shows providing valuable publicity for her campaign? Is she that fragile or brittle that she can’t withstand a series of civil questions? Will she burst into tears if she’s asked a difficult question? I wonder how that will work if she ever has to meet with heads of foreign governments. This whole VP nomination is a teetering house of cards with BS stamped on every one. It’s all about desperately validating John McCain’s bad, hasty decision. If you look at the history of the McCain campaign, you’ll see him add people to his campaign staff, time after time, who he has to throw under the bus about a week later after some skeleton drops out of their closet or they say some outrageous thing McCain has to disavow (see: Phil Gramm). He NEVER vets, does no due diligence, always throws the dice. With him as president, we could all be living in very interesting times.
to John Henry – LMAO –
We should add that line to Caribou Barbie: “I’m a point guard…”
and then when McCain Ken doll comes out (of course, it will have to be a MUCH older Ken, aka Gramps) he can say:
“She’s a point guard”
“Did I tell you I was a POW?”
“I vote with Bush 90% of the time. I want change.”
“The Keating 5 thing…cost you $2B…my bad….”
“My extramarital affairs…did I tell you I was a POW?”
I was telling my wife, after McCains performance at the RNC, and his demented selection of Palin, his obvious abandonment of his principles, all that’s needed is for him to take a dive off a stage like Dole did in the ’90’s! BTW, if McCain dies before the election do you think the Repubs would scrap the entire ticket and get a new one, or would they elevate Palin to the top spot and get a new Veep? What are your thoughts?
In my current state of deliriousness…what if HRC had won the primaries and had picked Chelsea as her VP nominee…..
Ahhh, guess what…I think Chelsea would have been a more sensible pick than Caribou Barbie!!…and I definitely think she’d have met the press by now.
On a more serious note….all this talk about laying off the family doesn’t wash with me, because as a mother (and I am a working one myself so I know what it is to be away for work and question my priorities, I know what it is to regret turning down a promotion for the sake of family, I know the constant struggle between work and family..but I also know the joy of being there at my child’s christmas play, the joy of the wonderful hugs and love that I get back- a reflection of the priority I give to my family life) so –
a. as a mother why would I out my 17 year old child for being pregnant as proof that Trig is my son……it only implies that Trig is my son but doesn’t prove it. She could have proved it without dragging poor Bristol into the mix.
b. How could any mother, who proclaims to put family as a priority go back to work after 3DAYS….especially not with a special needs child.
c. How could any mother whose teenager is pregnant and who has a special needs INFANT take on such a demanding responsibility?
I for one can not wait for her medical records to come out because she must be mentally not all there. as well as the push to get her in front of the press…there needs to be a push for medical records wich will clear up a. the Trig saga and b. her mental well being
“He(McCain) NEVER vets, does no due diligence, always throws the dice.”
Yep, maybe so…..but he killed FIDDY MEN in the war and then he got his SHINS BLOWED OFF, and now that he’s joined Team Peggy Hill he can do no wrong.
Stunt or Not, GOP Presses For Vote on Lifting Offshore Drilling Ban
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/07-1
people should call their representatives tomorrow.
those on the coasts have good economic arguments against it, protecting the shores and tourism.
all of us should be asking why the companies need new leases when they have yet to explore the regions already opened up for drilling. is this just a grab for leases while bush is still in there?
the likelihood that it will impact oil prices is questionable.
we don’t get the oil anyway, it has to go on the world market.
a focus on new energy technologies has a much better chance of creating new jobs on all levels, from development to manufacture. but tax incentives are needed to support these new ventures and their customers.
drill baby drill is as much of a gimmick as the SP nomination itself.
(was it biden?) today it was said that screaming “drill baby drill” at the dawn of the Energy Tech revolution is like screaming “IBMSelectric Typewriters” at the beginning of the PC revolution!
in response to my earlier comment, ReneND (09:17:14) wondered, “why are the poll numbers so close? The media can’t manipulate the polls to that degree-or can they.” and protus (09:21:31) responded, “It depends on where you poll. The country is divided in half basically,” and pointed out that “Colorado, New Mexico & Michigan. I beleive if obama wins those the worst he can do is a 269 tie which means win!! He doesnt need ohio or florida.”
i hope that protus is correct as far as the electoral map but, although the media would have you believe that “the country is divided in half basically,” i would disagree. poll after poll after poll on the issues themselves, taking away any party identification issue, the citizens of this country agree with the position that is promoted by the democratic party. currently more people are registered democrats than registered republicans — and the new voter registrations of democrats completely swamps the numbers of new republican voter registrations.
so why does this presidential campaign poll so closely? because the american voter is grossly underserved and misled by the media. although republicans are terrible government leaders (as they have proven over and over and over again, not just in the last 7+ years) they are very good at undermining reality. how good are they? they are now using the fact that the media has grossly underserved and misled the public as an excuse for why their vice presidential nominee is not going to answer questions!
those of us in the internetwebs are able to review, confirm or discredit enormous amounts of information. we have approximately 338 million people in this country. 238 million are believed to have access to the internet. but only 15% of the country gets their news information from the internet. and of that 15% we do not know how many read a wide array of information or stick primarily to mainstream websites.
if you only got your information from the teevee or the newspaper or the radio, you would be more likely to believe things that are in fact not true or that are so distorted as to have no relationship with reality.
and that is why it is important for all of us to — gently — help others in our communities to not just recognize specific distortions and lies but the importance of finding out what lies behind any given statement. one of the destructive canards that right has made their own is that of equivalency — when a republican lies or distorts and is discovered, it is mandatory to point out something said by a democrat.
case in point — in the washington post their fact checker debunked the palin lie about the so-called bridge to nowhere. to keep the record “balanced,” the fact checker “debunked” biden’s statement that mccain has voted with bush 95% of the time by saying biden was wrong that mccain had “only” voted with bush 90% of the time. palin said something patently false, biden was minimally incorrect, and the fact checker was not accurate himself — in 2007 mccain did vote with bush 95% of the time. except for 2004, when mccain voted with bush 78%, and 2007, mccain voted with bush 90% of the time.
a false equivalency was asserted to “balance” a lie by a republican with a pretty minor inaccuracy by a democrat dressed as “a lie” which misleads the public, causing many people to shake their head and dismiss politicians as “unable to tell the truth” when in fact it is the media that is not telling the truth.
why is this a close race? too many people don’t hear the truth and reject everything but what they want to believe because it’s “common knowledge” that everybody lies.
here are the links to the sources i used for the internet numbers:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=6385
Re: polls
It is a little hard to tell what is going on right now because the popular vote polls are volatile and probably undercount Obama and the state polls are not updated all that often. Nothing looks good for McCain, though. He barely ahead or even behind in states that Bush took by wide margins. Obama is polling at or just below 50%, the third parties are taking votes mostly from McCain, and McCain never quite gets enough momentum (actually not even all that close) to change the trends.
It looks to me that McCain has to take PA and play an almost perfect game everywhere else to win. One serious upset (e.g., VA) and it will be all over for him. Obama, on the other hand, has a much wider margin of error. Demographics, voter registration, public opinion— all are going against the Republicans.
Obama seems very controlled and confident to me, as opposed to McCain and the Republicans, who seem utterly freaked. Obama and Biden should be looking out for flying sinks.
infactyou’resoakinginit (10:47:42) :
“If SP has so much executive experience, in fact more than Barack Obama, why is she being kept carefully hidden away from the press? ”
Well this is my theory and I have no proof- but go ahead and quote me if you like!
SP is being sequestered in a medical center under a false name. Karl Rove has also checked in under an assumed name. Surgeons at said unknown facility have drilled a hole in her pretty head and are currently filling that hole a genetically cloned copy of Karl Rove’s brain. You might think this would involve removing more of her skull, but it doesn’t. A tiny hole is all that’s necessary because Rove’s brain is actually a liquid form of fecal matter. (diarrhea.)
bwilder- didn’t they do the 1st face transplant last year? hmmmm
bravo! bwilder has answered the question!
Stephen Colbert summed it up perfectly when he displayed the Republican’s campaign slogan.
GIVE US ONE MORE CHANCE!
THIS TIME WE WON’T FUCK IT UP.
(was it biden?) today it was said that screaming “drill baby drill” at the dawn of the Energy Tech revolution is like screaming “IBMSelectric Typewriters” at the beginning of the PC revolution!
No that was Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist from The New York Times, Tom Friedman who was talking about his new book “Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America,”
“Obama and Biden should be looking out for flying sinks.”
LOL!
So true.
No Matthew, you’re not over-reacting. This is just more of the same from the Democrats, even from Obama himself. The Democrats just REFUSE to learn from Rove that they can’t just be “gentlemanly” and give these soft, backpeddling, reactive answers to the stupid questions the media ask. It only takes one instance for this kind of thing to be replayed ad infinitum on the 24/7 news cycle, and it won’t matter HOW reasoned and intelligent and RIGHT Obama is. All that gets remembered is the basic accusation: OBAMA IS A MUSLIM.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, The Dems Aren’t Getting It! The Sarah Palin thing is a classic example of watching how the Democrats continually mishandle their main challenge from the GOP. Don’t use reason – attack, attack, ATTACK!!!
What we should all be hearing about right now on the media is why Palin hasn’t had to give an interview yet.
rabbler- thanks! between the mudflatitis, news on screen and print, and the sunday talk, i just couldn’t place it. it was SO true. what a great line.
To; infact I think I know the reason she is not giving interviews and showing up on Sunday morning discussion. I ran across a video of her being asked question by an Alaskan reporter about the trooper firing mess. The questions were simple and straight forward but the questioners were pretty persistent. She wouldn’t give straight answers, her eyes kept shifting all over the room and she looked very uncomfortable. The Republicans may not want that kind of image.
Joan, Matthew,
How can they run this over there tubes…when they ran the “Rev. Wright” comments all over the MSM channels. Wouldn’t that be a flip flop!!! You can’t say Obama was with a Christian church for 20 years, and then say he is a “Muslim”
I’m going to re-post this on this thread. Sorry if you saw it on the last one. (For some reason the latest post doesn’t load unless I close out IE and relaunch.)
AKM, you can’t be complimented enough for what you are doing.
1) Helping get to facts and equally importantly dispelling rumors
2) Giving your readers a wonderful opportunity to discuss, occasionally to rant, to express our concerns (sometimes as gallows humor), to find that we’re not alone in our feelings of two parallel universes
3) AND MOST IMPORTANTLY: TO ORGANIZE AS A COMMUNITY, finding strength in each other as we enourage each other to get involved
I was out for the evening and came home to several hundred new comments. I’ll never catch up, but I’ve skimmed some.
In discussing/debating the limits of propriety relative to Palin’s family issues, here’s my take on it…
It’s the policies and ultimately the desire for control over others that should be front and center, not the kids. Secondarily, Sarah Palin’s demonstrated judgment and priorities.
CHOICES… Sarah had them, and I applaud her for having the opportunity to make the ones that were right for her and consistent with her beliefs. I hope that Bristol and not Sarah made the choice for her. I’m glad that they have the kind of supportive family (at least outwardly) that will honor and uphold those choices. But the need for “rescue housing” for teen mothers is ample proof that not all young women are that fortunate.
NOBODY LIKES ABORTION. The meme that people who are pro-choice are pro-abortion is hogwash! But dammit, it galls me that the people who claim to be pro-life are so willing to toss those precious fetuses under the bus once they’re born. To me, pro-life means that people at all ages and stages are of value. It means supporting a living wage, making sure that ALL kids have the chance for a good education, that ALL people have access to quality, affordable health care. It means job opportunities for people so they don’t need to resort to crime to care for their families. It means rehabillitation programs for incarcerated people so that when they’re released they have the skills to make it. It means transition programs for newly released prisoners so they can adjust to life on the outside and build a work history. It means objecting to the violence and degrading imagery in film, TV, and music. It means supporting animal rights. It means being pro-environment and trying to figure out how this planet can support its inhabitants in a sustainable manner. And it means getting beyond the parochial view and seeing that people are people, regardless of their race, religion (or lack of it), gender, sexual orientation, disability, or national origin, and that as a result we are more alike than we are different.
No way, no how, NO MCCAIN! Go Obama-Biden!
mike- you have an interesting question.
the base who thinks she’s sooo qualified would press for her to be at the top of the ticket, they they would have to put one of the also-rans? or a party “elder”type if there are any that would take it. interesting question, since she got no votes. didn’t romney come in 2nd with votes? huckabee with time? and of course ron paul is a republican, and has never dropped out.
there must be party rules on who gets the spot.
My personal fave is last week on Larry King.
Congresswoman Molinari (R) said Palin is a reformer, big thick track record on reform etc.
Larry responded by saying wasn’t Eliot Spitzer a reformer too?
Before he wasn’t anymore?
I think they are planning strategy as well as training Palin how to deal with questions about trooper-gate. They may hope that the issue will fade a little if they stall and stonewall.
It’s going to be hard for Palin because she is caught red-handed lying about the trooper-gate mess. Her initial statements were categorical denials of anyone connected with her putting pressure to get the trooper fired. After all the hard evidence to the contrary including her husband being involved, it’s almost impossible to believe she was in the dark at the time she made the denials.
Question: How will she deal with this when interviewed? Will she try to gloss it over and move on? What if the interviewer persists? Will she say she doesn’t want to talk about it? Maybe she’ll use the BushCo technique claiming that one cannot comment until the case has been adjudicated.
You know, I think the Obama Campaign is playing it just about right— just enough push back (including that terrific “give ’em hell” speech from Biden) to keep the Republicans at bay. So far (and there’s not much far left after this), Obama has been running just about the most brilliant, disciplined campaign I have ever seen or read about in American history. I’d say the toughest challenge, beating Hillary Clinton, is already behind him.
One thing you have to keep in mind is that if Obama wins, he will then have to govern the country. He can’t push those who are still Republicans to the point where they will oppose everything he wants to do out of pure spite. There need to be a few of them willing to go along in order to marginalize the rest.
On the other hand, should (God forbid) McCain win, he will have one hell of a time trying to govern the country. He has sold out all his bipartisan principles and his cross-the-aisle friendships in his desperate bid to rally the right wingers. He will be facing a solid Democratic majority in congress and pretty much no one in the country is going to be giving him a lot of slack this time around.
On the issue of experience, it is worth pointing out for those who will pay attention that Bush put together one of the most experienced governments in the last 50 years. Cheney alone has more relevant experience than many presidents. Then they collectively ran the country into the ditch.
Bush also had one of the most consistent, unwaving policy stances in American history. He refused to budge on any issue and kept on advisors and officials long after their policies and actions had been discredited. Again, this did not work out very well. It reminds me of one of my favorite Joni Mitchell songs:
“I am as constant as the northern star.”
“Constantly in the darkness? Where’s that at? If you want me I’ll be in the bar.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122065537792905483.html
Wall Street Journal
Palin’s Hockey Rink Leads
To Legal Trouble in Town She Led
The Gramps McCain doll will say:
“I was a POW POW POW POW POW POW POW . . . . ” over and over until the Caribu Barbie doll hits him in the head with the butt of her AK47 and says, “Shut up you old fool.”
I want my toys to be interactive.
Did anyone see this panel discussion on how to hire someone? Interesting questions, and very interesting answers by exec’s, entrepreneurs, and leadership coaches. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26545526/ It’s definitely worth the read. Remember how Hillary viewed the campaign as essentially a hiring decision?
Whenever Obama is asked who has more executive experience, he should answer:
I am not interested in quibbles about who has more executive experience.
I have “the” experience to lead this nation.
Joe Biden has “the” experience to lead this nation.
The strongest indication of how one may lead a nation is how one runs their campaign.
For two years, we have run on a platform of bringing change to the American people based on issues that serve our citizens best common interests.
In the remaining two months, we will use every opportunity to communication to the American people our views on key issues and our plan of action for the moment we hit office.
The public deserves no less.
Whenever Obama is asked who has more executive experience, he should answer:
I am not interested in quibbles about who has more executive experience.
I have “the” experience to lead this nation.
Joe Biden has “the” experience to lead this nation.
The strongest indication of how one may lead a nation is how one runs their campaign.
For two years, we have run on a platform of bringing change to the American people based on issues that serve our citizens best common interests.
In the remaining two months, we will use every opportunity to communicate to the American people our views on key issues and our plan of action for the moment we hit office.
The public deserves no less.
Ed – oh my gosh, that’s hilarious! We really need to get Pixar to do the movie!!
I agree with the comments in that the Repubs are playing smug, arrogant and hate. This morning, Biden tried to get the real issues on the table. The problem with Americans is that we like ENTERTAINMENT. We like “dish.” We like tabloids and trash, and all of that. The Republicans are playing to that. It is up to us to help Obama/Biden to nail that Rove to the train track once and for all. Here’s what Iacocca wrote in his book last year. I MADE my son sit down and read this book. (although I don’t agree with everything Lee did, his comments are spot on.):
Had Enough?
Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, “Stay the course.”
Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned Titanic. I’ll give you a sound bite: Throw the bums out!
You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore. The President of the United States is given a free pass to ignore the Constitution, tap our phones, and lead us to war on a pack of lies. Congress responds to record deficits by passing a huge tax cut for the wealthy (thanks, but I don’t need it). The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we’re fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving pom-poms instead of asking hard questions. That’s not the promise of America my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I’ve had enough. How about you?
I’ll go a step further. You can’t call yourself a patriot if you’re not outraged. This is a fight I’m ready and willing to have.
My friends tell me to calm down. They say, “Lee, you’re eighty-two years old. Leave the rage to the young people.” I’d love to—as soon as I can pry them away from their iPods for five seconds and get them to pay attention. I’m going to speak up because it’s my patriotic duty. I think people will listen to me. They say I have a reputation as a straight shooter. So I’ll tell you how I see it, and it’s not pretty, but at least it’s real. I’m hoping to strike a nerve in those young folks who say they don’t vote because they don’t trust politicians to represent their interests. Hey, America, wake up. These guys work for us.
Who Are These Guys, Anyway?
Why are we in this mess? How did we end up with this crowd in Washington? Well, we voted for them—or at least some of us did. But I’ll tell you what we didn’t do. We didn’t agree to suspend the Constitution. We didn’t agree to stop asking questions or demanding answers. Some of us are sick and tired of people who call free speech treason. Where I come from that’s a dictatorship, not a democracy.
And don’t tell me it’s all the fault of right-wing Republicans or liberal Democrats. That’s an intellectually lazy argument, and it’s part of the reason we’re in this stew. We’re not just a nation of factions. We’re a people. We share common principles and ideals. And we rise and fall together.
Where are the voices of leaders who can inspire us to action and make us stand taller? What happened to the strong and resolute party of Lincoln? What happened to the courageous, populist party of FDR and Truman? There was a time in this country when the voices of great leaders lifted us up and made us want to do better. Where have all the leaders gone?
The Test of a Leader
I’ve never been Commander in Chief, but I’ve been a CEO. I understand a few things about leadership at the top. I’ve figured out nine points—not ten (I don’t want people accusing me of thinking I’m Moses). I call them the “Nine Cs of Leadership.” They’re not fancy or complicated. Just clear, obvious qualities that every true leader should have. We should look at how the current administration stacks up. Like it or not, this crew is going to be around until January 2009. Maybe we can learn something before we go to the polls in 2008. Then let’s be sure we use the leadership test to screen the candidates who say they want to run the country. It’s up to us to choose wisely.
So, here’s my C list:
A leader has to show CURIOSITY. He has to listen to people outside of the “Yes, sir” crowd in his inner circle. He has to read voraciously, because the world is a big, complicated place. George W. Bush brags about never reading a newspaper. “I just scan the headlines,” he says. Am I hearing this right? He’s the President of the United States and he never reads a newspaper? Thomas Jefferson once said, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.” Bush disagrees. As long as he gets his daily hour in the gym, with Fox News piped through the sound system, he’s ready to go.
If a leader never steps outside his comfort zone to hear different ideas, he grows stale. If he doesn’t put his beliefs to the test, how does he know he’s right? The inability to listen is a form of arrogance. It means either you think you already know it all, or you just don’t care. Before the 2006 election, George Bush made a big point of saying he didn’t listen to the polls. Yeah, that’s what they all say when the polls stink. But maybe he should have listened, because 70 percent of the people were saying he was on the wrong track. It took a “thumping” on election day to wake him up, but even then you got the feeling he wasn’t listening so much as he was calculating how to do a better job of convincing everyone he was right.
A leader has to be CREATIVE, go out on a limb, be willing to try something different. You know, think outside the box. George Bush prides himself on never changing, even as the world around him is spinning out of control. God forbid someone should accuse him of flip-flopping. There’s a disturbingly messianic fervor to his certainty. Senator Joe Biden recalled a conversation he had with Bush a few months after our troops marched into Baghdad. Joe was in the Oval Office outlining his concerns to the President—the explosive mix of Shiite and Sunni, the disbanded Iraqi army, the problems securing the oil fields. “The President was serene,” Joe recalled. “He told me he was sure that we were on the right course and that all would be well. ‘Mr. President,’ I finally said, ‘how can you be so sure when you don’t yet know all the facts?'” Bush then reached over and put a steadying hand on Joe’s shoulder. “My instincts,” he said. “My instincts.” Joe was flabbergasted. He told Bush, “Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough.” Joe Biden sure didn’t think the matter was settled. And, as we all know now, it wasn’t.
Leadership is all about managing change—whether you’re leading a company or leading a country. Things change, and you get creative. You adapt. Maybe Bush was absent the day they covered that at Harvard Business School.
A leader has to COMMUNICATE. I’m not talking about running off at the mouth or spouting sound bites. I’m talking about facing reality and telling the truth. Nobody in the current administration seems to know how to talk straight anymore. Instead, they spend most of their time trying to convince us that things are not really as bad as they seem. I don’t know if it’s denial or dishonesty, but it can start to drive you crazy after a while. Communication has to start with telling the truth, even when it’s painful. The war in Iraq has been, among other things, a grand failure of communication. Bush is like the boy who didn’t cry wolf when the wolf was at the door. After years of being told that all is well, even as the casualties and chaos mount, we’ve stopped listening to him.
A leader has to be a person of CHARACTER. That means knowing the difference between right and wrong and having the guts to do the right thing. Abraham Lincoln once said, “If you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” George Bush has a lot of power. What does it say about his character? Bush has shown a willingness to take bold action on the world stage because he has the power, but he shows little regard for the grievous consequences. He has sent our troops (not to mention hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens) to their deaths—for what? To build our oil reserves? To avenge his daddy because Saddam Hussein once tried to have him killed? To show his daddy he’s tougher? The motivations behind the war in Iraq are questionable, and the execution of the war has been a disaster. A man of character does not ask a single soldier to die for a failed policy.
A leader must have COURAGE. I’m talking about balls. (That even goes for female leaders.) Swagger isn’t courage. Tough talk isn’t courage. George Bush comes from a blue-blooded Connecticut family, but he likes to talk like a cowboy. You know, My gun is bigger than your gun. Courage in the twenty-first century doesn’t mean posturing and bravado. Courage is a commitment to sit down at the negotiating table and talk.
If you’re a politician, courage means taking a position even when you know it will cost you votes. Bush can’t even make a public appearance unless the audience has been handpicked and sanitized. He did a series of so-called town hall meetings last year, in auditoriums packed with his most devoted fans. The questions were all softballs.
To be a leader you’ve got to have CONVICTION—a fire in your belly. You’ve got to have passion. You’ve got to really want to get something done. How do you measure fire in the belly? Bush has set the all-time record for number of vacation days taken by a U.S. President—four hundred and counting. He’d rather clear brush on his ranch than immerse himself in the business of governing. He even told an interviewer that the high point of his presidency so far was catching a seven-and-a-half-pound perch in his hand-stocked lake.
It’s no better on Capitol Hill. Congress was in session only ninety-seven days in 2006. That’s eleven days less than the record set in 1948, when President Harry Truman coined the term do-nothing Congress. Most people would expect to be fired if they worked so little and had nothing to show for it. But Congress managed to find the time to vote itself a raise. Now, that’s not leadership.
A leader should have CHARISMA. I’m not talking about being flashy. Charisma is the quality that makes people want to follow you. It’s the ability to inspire. People follow a leader because they trust him. That’s my definition of charisma. Maybe George Bush is a great guy to hang out with at a barbecue or a ball game. But put him at a global summit where the future of our planet is at stake, and he doesn’t look very presidential. Those frat-boy pranks and the kidding around he enjoys so much don’t go over that well with world leaders. Just ask German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who received an unwelcome shoulder massage from our President at a G-8 Summit. When he came up behind her and started squeezing, I thought she was going to go right through the roof.
A leader has to be COMPETENT. That seems obvious, doesn’t it? You’ve got to know what you’re doing. More important than that, you’ve got to surround yourself with people who know what they’re doing. Bush brags about being our first MBA President. Does that make him competent? Well, let’s see. Thanks to our first MBA President, we’ve got the largest deficit in history, Social Security is on life support, and we’ve run up a half-a-trillion-dollar price tag (so far) in Iraq. And that’s just for starters. A leader has to be a problem solver, and the biggest problems we face as a nation seem to be on the back burner.
You can’t be a leader if you don’t have COMMON SENSE. I call this Charlie Beacham’s rule. When I was a young guy just starting out in the car business, one of my first jobs was as Ford’s zone manager in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. My boss was a guy named Charlie Beacham, who was the East Coast regional manager. Charlie was a big Southerner, with a warm drawl, a huge smile, and a core of steel. Charlie used to tell me, “Remember, Lee, the only thing you’ve got going for you as a human being is your ability to reason and your common sense. If you don’t know a dip of horseshit from a dip of vanilla ice cream, you’ll never make it.” George Bush doesn’t have common sense. He just has a lot of sound bites. You know—Mr.they’ll-welcome-us-as-liberators-no-child-left-behind-heck-of-a-job-Brownie-mission-accomplished Bush.
Former President Bill Clinton once said, “I grew up in an alcoholic home. I spent half my childhood trying to get into the reality-based world—and I like it here.”
I think our current President should visit the real world once in a while.
The Biggest C is Crisis
Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It’s easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else’s kids off to war when you’ve never seen a battlefield yourself. It’s another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.
On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. Where was George Bush? He was reading a story about a pet goat to kids in Florida when he heard about the attacks. He kept sitting there for twenty minutes with a baffled look on his face. It’s all on tape. You can see it for yourself. Then, instead of taking the quickest route back to Washington and immediately going on the air to reassure the panicked people of this country, he decided it wasn’t safe to return to the White House. He basically went into hiding for the day—and he told Vice President Dick Cheney to stay put in his bunker. We were all frozen in front of our TVs, scared out of our wits, waiting for our leaders to tell us that we were going to be okay, and there was nobody home. It took Bush a couple of days to get his bearings and devise the right photo op at Ground Zero.
That was George Bush’s moment of truth, and he was paralyzed. And what did he do when he’d regained his composure? He led us down the road to Iraq—a road his own father had considered disastrous when he was President. But Bush didn’t listen to Daddy. He listened to a higher father. He prides himself on being faith based, not reality based. If that doesn’t scare the crap out of you, I don’t know what will.
A Hell of a Mess
So here’s where we stand. We’re immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We’re running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We’re losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.
But when you look around, you’ve got to ask: “Where have all the leaders gone?” Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.
Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We’ve spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone’s hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn’t happen again. Now, that’s just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you’re going to do the next time.
Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when “the Big Three” referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we going to do about it?
Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn’t elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don’t you guys show some spine for a change?
Had Enough?
Hey, I’m not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I’m trying to light a fire. I’m speaking out because I have hope. I believe in America. In my lifetime I’ve had the privilege of living through some of America’s greatest moments. I’ve also experienced some of our worst crises—the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War, the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I’ve learned one thing, it’s this: You don’t get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it’s building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That’s the challenge I’m raising in this book. It’s a call to action for people who, like me, believe in America. It’s not too late, but it’s getting pretty close. So let’s shake off the horseshit and go to work. Let’s tell ’em all we’ve had enough.
Excerpted from Where Have All the Leaders Gone?. Copyright © 2007 by Lee Iacocca. All rights reserved.
Someone above asked about the Palin Countdown/Coward Clock.
http://pol.moveon.org/palinclocks.html
bwilder
The Anchorage Daily News just reported that someone is proposing a lakeside trail around the lake Palin lives on, (unprecedented in Wasilla) both of which are within walking distance of the sport’s facility which was built to serve youth hockey.
Anyone that is familiar with Wasilla knows that nothing is within walking distance of anywhere, AND there are virtually NO sidewalks which forces pedestrians to walk in the street in the winter months when the snow piles up.
Unbelievable, so much for “reformer” – she’s chosen infrastructure projects that benefit her PERSONALLY.
Rosci (10:17:05) WROTE:
…This note from Gloria Steinem is worth the read. Like that link to Deepak Chopra’s analysis – this speaks volumes. We have to make sure that anyone on the fence gets loads of intelligent info soon!
~~~
By Gloria Steinem
September 4, 2008
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OK. The Steelers are ahead 35-3 early in the 4th Quarter. They are taking Roethlisberger out and Leftwich is going in to get some regular season game experience in the Steeler offense with everyone healthy. Yes. Experience DOES COUNT in some endeavors in life. So now that things are under control…I must now catch up on Mudflats.
Thank you so much for your post.
I think Gloria Steinem’s piece has nailed the issues. I am very glad I got to read it. “She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. ” That is the key essence to keep in mind for the next 58 days. In this context I think she has brought up something with each point she makes that is in the back of everyone’s mind now. The announcement of Palin on Fateful Friday just ten days ago to get the asinine Dobson vote could be the fatal moment of the GOP. The point in their desperation where they finally overreached. The point where the wooden stake can finally be driven into the vampires that have taken over our political process in the Rovian era. Enough is enough. The era of having to wear garlic necklaces from day to day to survive may now end. The era of empty mirrors on our national stage may be over. God, I hope so. Palin may be the chance to bury this forever. I am not being overconfident as many here have warned. This political gaffe of the Palin magnitude in a normal country would have absolutely given the election to us. But not in the train wreck of low information voters that is now the United States. But do not rule out the other potential in this. This may be a chance to bury the fundamentalist right FOREVER in national politics. Then we must all get busy with hammers and wooden stakes and never let it arise again. So everyone see the whole field as everything develops. We are in zone coverage now. But when it goes man to man I say we throw on everyone that can be beaten in a match-up. (Yes – I apologize for the football term.) Don’t forget about coat tails. We must get a Dem Congress and Dem Senate with O and Joe and some backbone infusions for all Dems who have been complicit in these last 8 years of hell.
Blessings to all Mudflatians. We have regrouped from Fateful Friday. We have regrouped on our own resources thanks to our now beloved Muck! Everyone take a Zen day off. Relax some. We are all now here. I love every one of you!
Now back to this Steeler drive. Leftwich is doing quite well!
http://www.adn.com/matsu/story/514080.html
link to the ADN about the lakeside trail.
LaughingAt… (11:20:03) :
mike- you have an interesting question.
the base who thinks she’s sooo qualified would press for her to be at the top of the ticket, they they would have to put one of the also-rans? or a party “elder”type if there are any that would take it. interesting question, since she got no votes. didn’t romney come in 2nd with votes? huckabee with time? and of course ron paul is a republican, and has never dropped out.
there must be party rules on who gets the spot.
well their base is full of double standard and hypocracy.
just watch this video 😉
http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=184086&title=Sarah-Palin-Gender-Card
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/07/report-mccain-pushed-woma_n_124615.html
I think more people are going to start telling the truth about McCain’s temper.
Yo Mudflats – I’d love to hear more follow-up about the racist remark Sarah Palin made after Obama beat-out Hillary in the primaries wherein she said at an Alaskan restruarant – “Sambo beat the Bitch!” Check out my blog for the full story. As someone from Alaska, please weigh-in. I understand this is the norm for most people there. ???
Awesome excerpt, Proud2BUSA. IMO, Lee Iaccoca should be running for office! 😉 I sometimes wish Obama would occasionally dip down to that level of pissed-off-ness and just hand the Republicans a nice, tall glass of Shut the F Up.
What a joke – they love the Faux news fluff piece on the Governor.
Karen I think McCain chose Palin to give cover to those who will be voting against Obama for racial reasons. The one constancy in the polling all this time is that there is a consistent number of voters who won’t vote for Obama because he’s black – they are more than willing to sacrifice their economic interests to avoid electing a black man to the White House.
Picking Palin gives them an ability to say “Look we’re progressive, we are voting for a woman”.
Ask yourself if how her nomination would have played to that crowd had she been black, Asian or actually Alaska Native?
http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/story/518490.html
Anne Kilkenney Letter write-up in the Anchorage Daily News
with photo of Anne.
The whole thing that really gets me is they wait wait wait……………..
Then slap her out there with an over agressive attack speech then hide her behind closed doors away from the press and public to answer questions.
Seems they are afraid to let her speak for her own self.
And would have her ONLY speak using scripted speeches and to the far right.
Palin requests talks with oil executives
Last week in her address to the nation, Palin stepped far over the line of truthiness (thanks Steven Colbert) when she told the country, “I fought to bring about the largest private-sector infrastructure project in North American history. And when that deal was struck, we began a nearly forty billion dollar natural gas pipeline to help lead America to energy independence.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
In fact the state has done little more to move the gas pipeline forward over the last twenty months than to grant a Canadian company $500 million to push paperwork with no guarantee a pipeline will be built.
http://www.andrewhalcro.com/palin_requests_talks_with_oil_executives
pvdugas
I think the “norm” in Alaska is to make provocative statements no matter what the subject.
I myself have encountered a lot of racists here, they make me sick. Wasilla is very “white” and its the one reason I really don’t like living here, (my husband and I are both white). This will never be my permanent home because of it. My husband and I often comment that being in an “all white” meeting or school event is creepy – I’d rather attend Jeremiah Wright’s South Side Chicago church than a hockey game in Wasilla – and I’m an atheist.
I prefer sexism to racism. As a woman I like being underestimated – I find great advantage in it as a business woman. Don’t get me wrong I still bristle at “sweetie” or “pretty little head”, but I take note and then make an end run around those people and prevail in spite of it.
The racism against Alaska Natives is unbelievably common and accepted. Ted Stevens has been a champion for Alaska Native communities, as has Don Young which is why they remain popular.
A couple of radio hosts got in a world of trouble for making awful comments about Alaska Native women.
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/376804.html
MIL, the SS# posted is from the Social Security Death Index and available to anyone. No deep dark secrets are being given away.
As to McCain’s remark about Palin being the “most popular governor in America”, I doubt she could have become governor in any of the Lower 48. With all due respect to our friends from Alaska, it’s different up there.
FromEngland–Thank you for writing what you did about the Palin baby drama and the Palin baby questions. It’s ludicrous for anyone to imagine that sensible women are not incredulous in face of the absurd tale of how this poor child was born and that we are not discussing it amongst ourselves.
The plane flight saga back to Alaska is simply unbelievable and women who have given birth know this. Naturally, the Obama campaign can’t touch it openly (ick, sorry) but THIS to my mind is the elephant in the room. A woman who would lie about such a thing is simply deranged and unfit. I don’t care about adultery or illegitimate children or any of that business. But I sure as hell don’t want a woman capable of engineering such a despicable ruse in the WH. And most especially not one who appears to be a religious fanatic.
And, I’m sorry, but I’m sick and tired of hearing how noble and loving she is for having gone through (yeah, right) with the Down Syndrome pregnancy. Plenty of sensible, upstanding women choose NOT to bring such pregnancies to term and do so for reasons that are perfectly valid and equally noble. Sarah seems to all about Sarah and the seductive Sarah story. I simply cannot believe that for the sake of his own blind ambition, McCain has foisted this vulgarian onto the national stage.
@ Matthew: Good catch, good link. And no, no over-reacting on your part.
Sen. Obama is a thoughtful guy who cares about what he says, just what the evil Rove clones like. Then there’s that despicable Stephanopolous with his sorry excuse for journalism, simply floating questions that will take Sen. Obama out of his strong suits.
Could be a fairly big mistake and something that the Democrats should learn from. I’m a little tired of the high road myself, and wish that Senators Obama and Biden would get nasty and dirty and throw it back in their faces. We don’t need to talk to each other this way. Maybe they could just say that. Lies. Distortions. Spin.
As they say, would you ever trust a person who starts out by saying, “Now, I would never lie to you.”? “Common sense”, the supposedly wonderful character trait of small town America, should tell them that they are being lied to. Maybe that needs to be pointed out.
Motto: They say they represent you. Why do they lie to you?
All Righty Now Mudflatoneers!
So many of you know AKMuckraker is THE MAN. Time to shoot an email to the corporatatistas and tell them that this blog from hour 1 has stayed ahead of the Sarah story with stunning accuracy. Let’s do this for one of the good guys!
Here are some outlets, please add more if you know them:
campbell.brown@cnn.com;60m@cbsnews.com, anderson.cooper@cnn.com, letters@cnn.com, editor@latimes.com, editor@washingtonpost.com, letters@msnbc.com, countdown@msnbc.com, phil.griffin@nbc.com, abrams@msnbc.com, akmuckraker@yahoo.com, scoop@huffingtonpost.com, letters@latimes.com, nightline@abcnews.com, ftn@cbsnews.com, nightly@nbc.com, newshour@pbs.org, letters@washpost.com, letters@newsweek.com, letters@time.com, renata.luczak@comedycentral.com, tips@upi.com, fair@fair.org
I just wrote my little scribble, so go to it. Give a few details. Be original and factual.
Smitty – doin’ it right now!
In the meantime, did y’all know that McCain voted with Bush 90% of the time?
“Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges, years ago, said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. That’s a personal opinion. That’s not what the constitution says. The constitution of the United States says we’re all — you know, it doesn’t say that. It doesn’t speak to the equality of America.” –George W. Bush, second presidential debate, St. Louis, Mo., Oct. 8, 2004
@Joan!! Thank you,,,,that’s what I keep on repeating (brokrn record)…..Dems can not afford just to focus on the issues.
This is the time to Donate, register and go VOTE!! BUT VERY VERY important to attack like a pit bull on the moral “non issues”, ie. can you take away SP’s credibility and veneer of integrity by showing her up to be a manipulative liar regarding babygate, affairgate, AIPgate and anyothergate that relates to her CHARACTER and patriotism.
For crying out loud…at Mcpalins rally in Colorado they made a big show of distributing Flags that they claim were discarded and set for the bin from the DNC??? OOOOhhhh Democrats are unpatriotic, they don’t wear flag pins….good God, how old ARE we?
It has become crystal clear very quickly that elections in America are just as much about personality/character/non-issues as they are about the economy, national security…etc and this one will be no different.
Okay, I know the whole babygate thing is probably a smokescreen of Rovian proportions, but isn’t this just more weirdness? On top of weirdness?
Short version – the WaPo has a lengthy piece on Palin and her family’s role in her governorship, which, by the way, is also very weird. The last page of the story contains this quote:
“She loves Alaska,” said Haylee Davison, who delivered a daughter the same day and watched her governor pace the hospital hallways to encourage labor. “She wanted her son to be born here, not Texas.”
Okay, we now have a witness to labor, Alaska Airlines flight attendants be damned. But why isn’t Haylee Davison listed on the hospital’s website? I don’t know, maybe the hospital is choosy about who gets listed, seeing as Trig isn’t there either.
But wait! Haylee Davison? Why, she seems a little young to be giving quotes to national news reporters.
“HAYLEE MAY DAVISON, born to Jennifer Lynn Krueger and Daylen Dean Davison of Wasilla on April 18. She weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces.”
Dear Barack: When They Lie, Call Them Liars
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-almond/dear-barack-when-they-lie_b_124621.html
I am sending a copy of this to the campaign and would urge to do likewise.
Wouldn’t it be great if he said it?!
Donate. Volunteer. Vote.
http://www.Obama08.com
Hey Smitty–
I appreciate what you’re doing, but I have really enjoyed being able to come here and not have to wade through Freepers. (For those not familiar, it’s a group of followers of the site FreeRepublic. Don’t go there. You’ll need to bleach your brain if you do. You’ll be filled with mind cooties.)
If the MSM gets hold of this site, we’ll be deluged with “Sarah is a gift from God” people and worse. I don’t think I can bear it. Word is filtering through progressive sites at a rapid pace. Apart from a few loonies, it’s been enormously enjoyable not to have to fight off the wingnuts.
Get real, Let’sGetReal!
This is just what They (the repubs and their media machine) do so well – convince their listeners that Black is White, Up is Down. That’s the lunatic brilliance of the whole Rove playbook!! Not only is Up Down, but a day later, Down is Up again…and no one bats an eye!! How else could McCain keep getting away with the statement that he (and Palin) are “Reformers”, and “Change Agents”? McCain is running to change, what? – 8 years of his own party’s disasters? Sarah Palin is a Reformer, of what? when all she has done is exchange the Old Boy Network with the New Boy (maybe Girl!) Network, as hungry for pork as ususal!? Yet, people seem to go for it. Beats me, but there it is. There do seem to be a percentage of folks in this country who will swallow anything, no matter how illogical it is. Read Animal Farm and pay attention to the pig character “Squealer”. It really is a from of mass hypnotism!
palmdate:
NOBODY LIKES ABORTION. The meme that people who are pro-choice are pro-abortion is hogwash!
Thank you! How many times do i have this argrument with my right-wing fundamentalist friends? NO ONE IS PRO-ABORTION. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Hey I think I’ll got get pregnant and not worry about it, because hey I can always just get an abortion!”
The decision to have an abortion is soul-wrenching, deeply considered and most of all PERSONAL! A personal decision by a woman who must face the reality in HER life if she is able to support and nurture a new life.
I’ve never met a woman in my life who think having an abortion is an easy choice or even the first choice.
If my 17 year old daughter, still in high school came to me and said, “Mom I can’t deal with this because I’m not ready to be a mother, I would say, “you make the choice and I support you in whatever you choose.”
And thank God we have choices…
I am against abortion but for the laws that protect the right to choose one.
I think I read somewhere that 9 of 10 pregnancies with a Down’s diagnosis end in abortion.
Aren’t most Down’s diagnoses occurring with “mature” women – who I would assume made a careful judgment to get pregnant later in life, and might arguably have a husband or committed partner?
If so, then doesn’t the abortion debate with regards to married/committed couple need to occur?
I happen to think a teenager who gets pregnant should have the baby – make that first hard choice of adulthood to put someone else’s needs above your own, keep it or give it up for adoption, either way you made your proverbial bed… lie in it.
It gets mighty complex when it comes to “unhealthy” pregnancies, babies with devastating diagnoses or other challenges in women who planned the pregnancies and may choose to end them for extremely complex reasons.
Good on you “Proud2BeUSA”
For the past 9 days an Alaskan blogger, https://mudflats.wordpress.com/ , has been
completely in front of the Sarah Palin stories before there were even hints of problems.
Within hours of his Friday, August 29th, 2008 morning post, it was already disclosed
on his blog that Bristol was pregnant and Alaskan residents expressed their doubts
about Sarah’s own pregnancy.
Within hours he dismissed her claims of being against the bridge to nowhere, her
deficit spending in Wasilla, her Ted Stevens 527 affiliation and countless other
topics that continue to swirl about Sarah.
He has not been wrong once. He lives in Alaska and is married to an Alaskan. He
is witty, incisive, accurate, fair but most important – accurate.
Since so many news organizations have fanned out the Alaskan landscape to vet Gov. Palin, this is someone you might want to hire and have writing for you. At the
very least, he would be an excellent consultant.
Best Regards
Smitty
I just thought maybe some of you would be interested in one of the Globe and Mails repolrters, John Ibbiston has to say about Sarah Palin and the repubs
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20080905.ibbitsonos/tpstory/
karion (12:04:42) :
But wait! Haylee Davison? Why, she seems a little young to be giving quotes to national news reporters.
“HAYLEE MAY DAVISON, born to Jennifer Lynn Krueger and Daylen Dean Davison of Wasilla on April 18. She weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces.”
I am trying to stay away from this babygate thing but yes, indeed that is very, very odd.????
This post about McCain & Palin was eye-opening & truly frightening. I ask everyone to read it & LINK to it or PASS IT ON. Good talking points, too.
http://www.100differentthings.com/2008/09/07/mccain-camp-caught-lying-about-palin/
BJA, It appears that AKMuckraker is doing a great job of keeping the creeps out of here and I am more thinking of his getting paid as a consultant since the corporate media is doing a piss poor job of vetting. I’m not saying publicize the website, I was talking about him getting paid for reporting. That’s all. Independent consultants are frequent contributors to KO and others and not all of them are corrupt. We know AK isn’t.
But I feel your fear…..and we must resist fear.
SP is supposed be interviewed by Charles Gibson on World News Tonight, some time next week in Alaska. Should be interesting.
Excellent article about how the Palin candidacy is playing out with middle-class American women voters. Answer, not so much…
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-women7-2008sep07,0,7702239.story
Does anyone here know how to get in touch with Charles Gibson of ABC? I think we should bombard him with emails and phone calls in an effort to get him to ask REAL questions when SP sits down with him for her first media “interview”.
All I saw what is your stance on rape and incest. You said you think teenagers should have to carry the baby and live with their consequences but what if that teenager is a victim of rape or incest?
Is that going to be the edited or unedited version? Better yet, why not do it live?
I’m voting for MALIBU BARBIE!
BWILDER – I just cut and pasted your link and sent to my state Obama coordinator asking if we could please get Senator Obama to be more aggressive and to fight with like tactics. they threw the first punch. If we continue to be, as Michael Moore said on Larry King Friday, “…the do-gooders who want to make everybody feel good…” we are going to lose. These people will do anything to get their sheep to baaaaaa and vote yes….
I hang the American flag in my yard every morning. Throwing away the flag is a serious offense. It would be interesting to know if there is any truth to this. If not, it MUST BE EXPOSED IN EVERY MEDIA OUTLET ACROSS THE LAND.
Anonymous I think it should remain a choice.
Me personally?
If it were me, it would be an extremely difficult choice to make. I might consider having a baby conceived from rape.
I cannot have anymore children, so my opinion is purely theoretical and should be taken with a grain of salt.
I’m an atheist who was raised a Catholic, a child is a gift – life is a gift. We have such a short life and the people that anyone has the fortune to spend that life with are scarce and precious.
I would never ever criminalize abortion – I think it does nothing to end abortion – abortion will always exist.
Do we want to drive it underground or keep it safe, legal and work towards making it rare?
Jeri (12:26:54) :
SP is supposed be interviewed by Charles Gibson on World News Tonight, some time next week in Alaska. Should be interesting.
I doubt it- he is totally biased to the right and you can bet that the McLie
camp will be vetting Charlie’s questions beforehand.
Then they will offer this up as a “you see she can be interviewed.” Moment and who knows when it will happen again. My guess is they are plowing her brain with policy (or lack of) and how to respond to questions in the debate.
Thanks Jeri.
Oh Great. Gibson from the fabulous ABC debate with Clinton and Obama hosted by Crawlie Giblet & Whorge SmuginThePockupus. Ought to be another GOP talking pointfest.
The worst hosted debate EVER!!! Remember this? The flag pin!
GIBSON: And, Senator Obama, I want to do one more question, which goes to the basic issue of electability. And it is a question raised by a voter in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, a woman by the name of Nash McCabe. Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NASH MCCABE, VOTER: Senator Obama, I have a question, and I want to know if you believe in the American flag. I am not questioning your patriotism, but all our servicemen, policemen and EMS wear the flag. I want to know why you don’t.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/DemocraticDebate/Story?id=4670271&page=2
SP wont speak because she will put her foot in her mouth! She will probably only speak if a newsperson accepts a list of questions to be asked to SP, so she can be comfortable. Other then the list…fax the question to McSame/SP camp. headquarters.
I agree with people who saw Tom Brokaw as pro SP…but it shows that Biden is strong, confident and everything we HAVE to have in a VP!! You cant choke anyone with answers that are truth, you cant make them choke with bullcrap reporting or rumors. The truth is the truth, and that will win any interview/debate or any other crap out there
Trust me, I am a mother of spec. needs mother…..i have had to fight soooo hard for my child…i ran on truth and altho it took 6 years for what my child needs, he won!!! The people trying to go against me for those services were using much of the same crap TB used with Biden, but i had the answer and the truth.
This election is gonna be hard fought. I believe in Obama/Biden judgment and i do believe they are building and building all the time and that is what they need to do. They, the repubs, will try to silence people and take things off internet and everything else so their lies will be seen to be true…the truth does eventually come out.
Still fighting hard for Obama/Biden!!!! Just more angry and determined
I am fired up and ready to go…yes we can America!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/photos/lat-rewind-palin-fashion5-2008sep05-pg,0,545039.photogallery?1
Smitty (12:23:56) :
But I feel your fear…..and we must resist fear.
~~~
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
~Frank Herbert, Dune – Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
XD I couldn’t resist.
Latest Electoral College predictions have Obama winning 306 – 232.
Best case scenario for McCain – IF he wins every swing state – is a 281 – 257 victory
Best case scenario for Obama – IF he wins every swing state – is a 381 – 157 victory
http://wiki.abulsme.com/2008_Electoral_College_Prediction#Potential_Totals
Do not underestimate Sarah.
She was able to run for governor without many (if not all) of these questions being asked.
She is stealthy when it comes to political rhetoric and hiding her true opinions.
She chooses her political battles based on the newsworthiness and glowing perception of her stance.
I happen to think Sarah has been dreaming and planning for this moment in history for a very long time.
George W. Bush was able to hide his true agenda, and still get reelected. Sarah is a much more skillful politician than W. was at that point in his career.
All I Saw (12:35:42) :
If it were me, it would be an extremely difficult choice to make. I might consider having a baby conceived from rape.
As someone who has ‘been there’ the very thought of having carry to fetus
of the violent knife wielding rapist who attacked me would have taken the last shreds of sanity I had after the rape. I was suicidal for months, scared of my own shadow and any creak in the floorboards, afraid to leave my house and then afraid to open the door when I got home. Afraid to search every closet and cupboard before I could go to bed. Going to bed doesn’t mean you sleep. And then when I did sleep the nightmares tortured me further.
It’s very hard to say what anyone else in this position would do but I tell you beyond a doubt I could never even imagine being forced to carry the child of a rapist for nine months and then have to look at that poor baby and see him in it’s face.
In Sarah Palin’s world I would have become a mother against my will after nine months of emotional hell. Honestly, looking back at the state I was in I don’t think I could have made it through and would have suicided out.
So much for MY right to life.
We are one or two Supreme Court Justices away from a reversal of Roe vs. Wade. This has been the religious zealot’s agenda for over three decades and
they are eagerly waiting for the shift in the Court that a presidency like McCain offers. Throw Palin and her extreme views in the mix and it sends a chill down my spine.
Jeri (12:26:54) :
SP is supposed be interviewed by Charles Gibson on World News Tonight, some time next week in Alaska. Should be interesting.
Wonder what Gibson had to promise to get the hottest first interview in recent history? I miss Tim Russert so very much.
What is Palin’s stance on domestic abuse?
You know what, I think we way OVERESTIMATE Sarah. She’s someone who couldn’t even get a B.A. (or is it a B.S. now, as recently reported) for six years of study. No offense to you Alaskans, but I’ve been to Wasilla. I know what it is. This blog began popular because AKM could explain how someone who is so, well, incompetent, rose in the small pond of Alaskan politics.
She’s just not ready for prime time, let alone national politics. If she’s so smart, and so ready, and soooo to be feared, where the heck is she now?
Rosci, Thanks for the Steinem article.
McCain took a gamble when he added Palin to his ticket, but he had little to lose. Even though we’re all shaking our heads and wondering how anyone (even McCain) could have made such a reckless choice, SP is certainly energizing the base. A month ago, I thought many of those who supported Bush might simply stay home – now I’m not so sure. Palin doesn’t have to change minds – she just needs to give the Republican base a reason to show up on election day. Which is why, as Siege mentioned, for Obama and Biden to take a laid back approach to SP is just the right note. They don’t have to convince most of us that her nomination is simply a political ploy – but if they hit her to hard, that could energize the base even more. I’m hopeful, though, that even if national polls tighten, Obama’s lead in key states (see http://www.electoral-vote.com) will not dissipate. Heck, SP might energize the Dem vote, too, just like she energized Obama’s fundraising efforts.
Those of you in Alaska, is she a quick study? My one concern is that by the time she goes on Face the Nation, she’ll be well-schooled and the fact that she went “X” number of days w/o talking to the press will be forgotten.
tammy (12:49:11) :
What is Palin’s stance on domestic abuse?
I don’t know but she has cut funding for teen mother programs,
special education, and creationism taught in the public schools.
My guees is she would say that of course she is ‘against’ domestic violence. But is find very hard to believe she’s ever funded any social services related needs.
Is she a quick study? Hm. She took six years and five schools to get a B.A. in journalism. I wouldn’t call that evidence of a “quick study,” myself. But I’m just a college professor type…
All I Saw
Your point is well taken. I think the vast majority of us do NOT underestimate Sarah at all, almost to the point of distraction, which is what she is.
Given that more Americans vote in American Idol and Dancing With the Stars, we here know that people love “stories” and personalities and are seldom swayed by the facts.
That is the purpose of exposing things that are LIES.
In fact we have a very healthy respect for her political prowess and a great deal of distaste for her politics.
Just as we contribute, we have to craft the truth as well as she has crafted the lies. So far Comedy Central and Bill Maher are doing it the best. Lead, follow or get out of the way.
Are they any comments in regards to her stance on domestic abuse that have been printed? For example, does she believe that you should remain married even in a abusive situation?
From the LA Times article on how thinking women are seeing Palin:
“Sara Taylor, former Bush White House political affairs director, described Palin as a “living, breathing replica of the middle class” who “connected with people in a way we haven’t seen a national figure do in a long time.”
Sarah Palin is NOT a “living, breathing replica of the middle class” – at least not any middle class people I know – they are for the most part decent people who just want to make a living. That is NOT a description of Sarah Palin.
The Haylee Davison story is interesting – I’d about stopped following any of the baby stuff but this is very interesting.
Also, somebody made a comment about Alaska Airlines staff and the flight home allegedly in early labor. What was that all about, if I may ask?
Let’sGetReal (08:18:54) :
I loved how Cindy tried to say Palin has more foreign policy, because Alaska is closer to Russia.
Is it that easy to sway people?
People think they’re in on the “joke” mocking us frothing at the mouth Democrats and liberals.
Palin’s coming out of the closet, so to speak. ;D An actual interview!
I think there’s a distinction to be made between “telegeneity” and “political prowess.” I do believe that most Americans know the difference. Please read the LA Times story on reactions from middle class women to Palin if you would like to see some evidence of this ability to distinguish.
Australia had it’s own Sarah Palin problem not that long ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Hanson
The parallels between Hanson and Palin are striking: same grand rollout speech drama and pandering to Christian extremism, same ultra-right wing nationalism and politics of fear, same refusal to engage with the press outside of tighly scripted events with reporters and commentators known to be biased in her direction, same bad record of fraud and deception lurking in the background……
Frankly, Sarah Palin is just more of the same, a Rupert Murdoch production redux, if you will.
this says it all….
http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/triump-at-gop-convention.html
The argument that Liberals are constantly trying to discredit Palin is absurd. I want her to PROVE to me that she is prepared to be a VP or a POTUS. Stop hiding, come out, and SHOW ME that you are this pitbull that you say you are. Otherwise, I will assume that you are a coward, a pawn, a sheep in beauty queen clothing who is only good for reading scripts, making insults, and shooting moose, but overall doing not much else.
You can’t discredit someone who has no credit to begin with.
Unfortunately, Palin couldn’t care less whether we vote for her or not. She’s won her gullible base with deceit and misdirection, and that’s all she wanted.
Mil
lol notice its abc.
how about hardball?? or something more engaging.
I see staged questions and staged answers in the future 😉
For certain, I won’t allow myself to listen to a Gov. Palin interview until I am positive I listen with the proper degree of “deference”.
It’s very pleasant to know I’ll never hear her voice again.
Agreed POTUS. But he has been the moderator for most of the debates, if not all, for this season. *shrug*
Protus even Meet the Press offered an invitation. And what about Gwen Ifel of PBS? Isn’t she going to be one of the moderators of the vp debate?
anonym (13:08:22) :
It’s very pleasant to know I’ll never hear her voice again.
LMAO !!
Anchorage Daily News article today:
“Nation examines Palin’s beliefs”
http://www.adn.com/sarah-palin/story/518514.html
I think we need to step back and look at what the REAL Republican Agenda is. Following are some pieces to the puzzle:
1) The Republicans put together a show that focused almost exclusively on the military, a patriot was defined as a solder exclusively, and that a POW should lead America.
2) Sarah Palin’s nomination was announced just as Cheney was quietly leaving for Georgia.
3) The media downplayed extensively that Georgia crossed Russia’s line FIRST, and that Putin’s response was swift and strong.
4) From my understanding there is a pipeline near where Georgia invaded.
5) China just signed a large oil deal with Iraq.
6) China has a much more voracious energy appetite than the United States.
7) China is concerned about fulfilling this energy requirement from the unstable Middle East.
8) China and Russia have been trying to more closely align over the past several months. This is reflected by Putin’s harder and harder stance with the Bush Administration.
9) This whole Palin leaves closer to Russia than any other Governor positioning.
10) McCain pointedly called out Putin in his address last week: “…I’m not scared of you…” which caused many of us to shudder as we considered yet a new Cold War era.
Why do you want to bet that Bush/Cheney/MCCAIN advised Georgia to invade Russia? When it didn’t work out, Cheney had to go quietly over there last week and try to make nice/nice? What do you want to bet that over the next 45-60 days that we have a more visible “altercation” with Putin, and that our “terror alert” escalates up to Orange?
The reality is these guys LIKE WAR. McCain even admitted it! In the back of my mind, I’ve played many scenarios why this would “feel” like Germany in the 1930’s: extreme nationalism, drive to one party, God and Religion playing a critical role in the decision making, emotions, fear. . . Hitler was a master at this. Remember, at the RNC, they didn’t MENTION the economy, the homeless, AN ALTERNATIVE ENERGY PLAN (and btw, do you even KNOW how long it takes to set up an oil rig and start drilling???). I’m telling you, this is it. Palin IS a diversion, but not for the reasons we’ve believed.
Sorry for all my typos! I start typing and talking to myself, and I just noticed. . .
The neo-con agenda is to destroy government.
They hate government and seek office to destroy it from within, to create confusion and chaos to a such a point that sanity and logic are forever irretrievable.
For abit of a change and some good information A Radio Show To Stream, on Veterans and Military concerns.
Sundays at 3pm
KPHX 1480 “About Face” is a program brought to you by the Phoenix Chapter of Veterans For Peace. Veterans For Peace is a national organization that draws on the personal experiences of veterans to raise awareness of the true costs and consequences of militarism and war and to seek peaceful, effective alternatives. There are over 150 active chapters across this country and is spreading.
***********
Now Phoenix doesn’t do Day-Light savings, so Phoenix is on PST, i.e. Calif etc.. Here on the East Coast it’s coming up in the next hour, which is working with time now, but when clocks switch so does difference in stream time. But I’m sure if you didn’t know about this show and never listened in you won’t be sorry if you catch it. It’s on every Sunday, has changed from Sunday to Saturday and back, right now there’s a local Phoenix Show about Car Care. Give it a click to see what I mean, coming next hour.
I’m sorry again – Russia has several natural pipelines as you guys know and the fit between China and Russia would be scary for the United States, but a natural fit at least geographically for those two super-powers. It COULD be that someone in the US (but certainly not Bush or McCain) have already played this scenario out, and knows we have to align closer to the Middle East. Remember, also the shortage in the coming years is going to be around WATER. Look around geographically – that can also provide some telling details.
tammy
Where they went wrong was holding her back and then bringing her out at the convention.
Then all she did was basically give an attack speech.
That is not going to earn respect from the Americans. Sure maybe the conservatives of the country, but they are not the only one voting in this election.
She has a long way togo as far as being respected in this country as a whole.
The more people find out and realize exactly whats she has done and what she is about the more she will have to answer questions.
If they do not put her out to the public and she does not answer those questions she will actually hurt her ticket more than help it.
Again using her as an attack dog then hiding her from her on past from the media will haunt the ticket come election day.
People do not just vote for anything because its nice and shiney they need complete disclosure of information and to review the information in their own minds.
When ever you hold back that information you create doubt.
With doubt you will lose votes.
Proud to Be USA, hurrah. I think you are right about her “Big Oil” agenda, and why she was picked. She’s the “corporatism for the future” candidate, for sure.
Regarding McCain and his bunch saying Palin’s kids should be off limits – I had forgotten about the following foot in mouth incident –
In 1998 Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, told the following joke at a Republican fundraiser:
“Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?” McCain joked about the then-President’s then-teenage daughter. “Because her father is Janet Reno.”
This was not an aside or an overhead private comment. This was in public in front of lots of people. He really doesn’t have much class.
bwilder,
They probably got the names confused, i.e. reversed the mom and the baby.
However, Trig was born at 6:30am on the 18th. SP didn’t show up until late on the 17th or early on the 18th. Would she really have been pacing the halls to encourage labor? Her water had broken 24 hours earlier.
Much circumstantial evidence suggests that the baby’ mother is BP, not SP. Could it be that she was out pacing in anticipation of the birth (by her daughter)?
Regarding my comment above about Bristol playing basketball, the Juneau paper indicates that she attended Juneau Douglass High in school year 2006/07, so we still don’t know where she went after she left Wasilla High in Sep 07.
Maybe this person can tell us SP was hooked up to an IV or if her very pregnant state was visible. Maybe she can tell us the names of some of the nurses who were working on that shift.
Taken from Alaskan article.
ACK !! I’d rather be “Apocalypsed” in New York
than ministered to by that group. I thought Alaskans were a free spirited bunch who didn’t like to be told what to do? Mucracker? is this common??
Later, senior pastor Ed Kalnins — with Palin standing at his side — spoke about tapping into Alaska’s natural resource wealth in order to fulfill the state’s destiny of serving as a shelter for Christians at the end of the world.
“I believe that Alaska is one of the ‘refuge states’ — come on you guys — in the Last Days,” Kalnins said, raising his arm to underscore his point. “And hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state to seek refuge. And the church has to be ready to minister to them.”
Yeah, Lulu, I’m not sure she would play much of a role other than to be the mouthpiece for this nefarious guys. It just eating at me last week. I have friends who’ve set up rigs, and it’s no short-term feat. . . even the commercials are saying this could help us for like, 50 years. It is definitley not a long-term solution and at what cost?
The Republicans at masters at creating fear where there is none. I remember in 2002 they even scared up the Carolina coasts by talking about potential enemies stalking off our Coasts – (there were none). I think they are masters when pulling together the chess pieces. The reasons 9/11 was such a shock is because they didn’t know about it. I keep coming back to the known relationships between the Bushes and Saudi’s – that if China and Russia don’t need Middle Eastern oil, or can at least mitigate their reliance on it – that’s not a good thing for their personal coffers. It’s dark, I know, but the pieces just kind of fit. . .
Yeah, Lulu, I’m not sure she would play much of a role other than to be the mouthpiece for this nefarious guys. It just eating at me last week. I have friends who’ve set up rigs, and it’s no short-term feat. . . even the commercials are saying this could help us for like, 50 years. It is definitley not a long-term solution and at what cost?
The Republicans are masters at creating fear where there is none. I remember in 2002 they even scared up the Carolina coasts by talking about potential enemies stalking off our Coasts – (there were none). I think they are masters when pulling together the chess pieces. The reasons 9/11 was such a shock is because they didn’t know about it. I keep coming back to the known relationships between the Bushes and Saudi’s – that if China and Russia don’t need Middle Eastern oil, or can at least mitigate their reliance on it – that’s not a good thing for their personal coffers. It’s dark, I know, but the pieces just kind of fit. . .
Rabbler on the article you posted some questions.
___________________________________________________
Pray for the construction of the $30 billion natural gas pipeline, Palin told them. Pray for the military men and women overseas, “that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending (U.S. soldiers) out on a task that is from God. That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for — that there is a plan and it’s God’s plan.”
___________________________________________________
On that part, would God really want humans to destroy the earth anymore than they already had? Polar Bears is one of God’s creations but didn’t she sue the federal government to block them from being placed on the endangered species list? This is something I have questioned for a long time but why would God want you to have a war in His land so to speak? Where Iraq and Iran is used to be referred to as Persia. And some of the bible did take place over there. So why would God ever want you to go to war?
________________________________________________________
“I believe that Alaska is one of the ‘refuge states’ — come on you guys — in the Last Days,” Kalnins said, raising his arm to underscore his point. “And hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state to seek refuge. And the church has to be ready to minister to them.”
_______________________________________________________
Is he saying the end is near? And she said nothing later to distance herself from him? I don’t think Rev. Wright even went this far.
_________________________________________________
On Wes Keller he wants to: (From the article)
introduced legislation sought by the Alaska Family Council that requires all state-funded public libraries to install filters to protect kids from “inappropriate” material.
_________________________________________________
Wasn’t there a ruling recently that said that was unconstitutional? That it violated the free speech of others?
_________________________________________________________________
Eventually he hopes to see the state mandate that intelligent design be taught alongside evolution, Keller said Friday. He also favors providing public funds to parents seeking private education through some kind of voucher system.
_______________________________________________________________
Didn’t a court rule that intelligent design was just another attempt to teach religion in public schools? Where are you going to get the public funds for the voucher system? Don’t we have a debt as it is right now?
Regi
I’ve encountered a few of these extremists and avoid them at all costs.
Alaskans ARE independently minded.
My personal view on religion is that it is a crutch for people who are fundamentally afraid – and there is lots of fear to go around these days.
Personally I’m more afraid of the Sarah types who manage to hide their extremist views/associations so adeptly. If they think they are correct or accurate in their thinking why do they keep it in the shadows? Especially when it comes to getting elected?
At least the people who speak about them in public are being honest, even if its bizarre.
Proud 2BUSA, I agree the military theme for the Republicans is front and center. My bet is that SP’s first interview will be related to coming up 9/11 anniversary and topic of questions will be mainly concerning her son’s enlistment and service in the military. Proud mom…pulling heartstrings….come on America….you just gotta love her!
Watch and see.
gizmo (13:03:09) :
this says it all….
http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/triump-at-gop-convention.html
——————————–
Thanks gizmo for that link.
I loved one of the comments on the “Triumph The Insult Dog” piece one link above the americablog. Some named ” hephaestion” WROTE:
“I just woke up from a horrible nightmare. In it, McCain went to Alaska, and while he was shopping in a Family Dollar Store he found this trash-mouth Tina Fey look-alike clerk with a Mormon-polygamist-wife hairdo and he asked her to be his Vice Presidential running mate. She held insanely scary rightwing views, yet the American people actually LIKED her and ignored her freaky views because they were evidently hell-bent on having a trash-mouth Tina Fey look-alike clerk with a Mormon-polygamist-wife hairdo negotiating with Putin and dealing with global warming. Can you even IMAGINE a worse nightmare??”
Been lurking here since McCain threw Caribou Barbie on us last Friday. One of the many things that make me sick over this woman is her disregard for wildlife.
Here’s a good article from over at “The Moderate Voice” that’s pretty succinct at expressing this …
No Wolf Whistles for Sarah Palin’s Compassion (Guest Voice)
To Tammy – McCain recommended the “voucher system” in his acceptance speech.
@proud2busa….I do believe that obama will win. Having said that, if McCain wins….Palin will be relegated to the basement. The “old boys” in washington will all be calling her a C%$^% Trollop the first time she steps out of line.
I am amazed at her total lack of perception…she is being used and that is that. Should McCain die…do you really believe that Karl Rove and that bunch will let her make decisions? All she was needed for is to be a prop…similar to those greek columns that she ridiculed Obama for. Stupid stupid woman.
curiositykilledthecat (13:31:28) :
Proud 2BUSA, I agree the military theme for the Republicans is front and center. My bet is that SP’s first interview will be related to coming up 9/11 anniversary and topic of questions will be mainly concerning her son’s enlistment and service in the military. Proud mom…pulling heartstrings….come on America….you just gotta love her!
Watch and see.
_______________________
If that was true on the military part, did they go out to the Minneapolis V.A. Hospital and visited any of the wounded vets there? Especially the ones they have out there from the Iraq War? I know some people that work out there and they said they didn’t come out there. That would had been a great “photo op”. This hospital has a new brain trauma unit out there. What about the veteran homes in Minneapolis and Hastings? Did they even bother going out there?
Proud2BUSA
We aren’t going to Align with the Middle East, that Bridge has been burned, one of the reason the petro costs have risen so quickly, the squeeze.
From Iran, Iraq, Syria, and probably eventually the Saudi’s will Align with China and Russia, China because they’re playing the Economic game we should be but more importantly they’re not Making Enemies even in Africa thet’re doing what the West should have done looooong ago, Help Develope and Expand their Economies!
We’re Toast in that part of the World to much Hatreds Built from past and now present and we’re the ones that are going to get the Blowback!
France and some of our other allies will also align with them.
BTW, has anyone heard that John McCain was a POW?
AND: Just opened in theaters everywhere, the Major Motion Picture of the Year!
Jimstaro – in ehem, “violent”, agreement with you. It’s a shame and I think these old geezers keep trying to go back and replay the same old game. On CNN this morning it had several world leaders who were asked about McCain and Obama. Very few felt McCain was good for the global neighborhood. He’s about isolationism which we’ve practiced over the past 8 years.
Tammy – John McCain voted against veteran benefits 10 of the 14 times bills came before Congress over the past 8 years. he is NOT a friend of the Veterans, and goodness knows, that probably wouldn’t play over well at a VHA.
I think you are right about her “Big Oil”
Why is she getting the “Oil” vote, can’t be just because she wants to Drill Drill Drill, they’ve been pumping in Alaska now for a long time, yet Alaskans are and have been paying more for gas and heating than the lower 48, seems Pols there don’t have much to run on, even if it is jobs for drilling.
jimstaro- i think obama is the anti-toast
but your argument is a great one for the green revolution.
compete, or create a whole new playing field
Proud2BUSA, I know!! Now to be fair, want to make sure google get’s an accurate record, he has been out there before, as has Pelosi, but if they are going to run on their pro military record, then you would expect them to at least attempt to visit the vets out there. But then again, this is a continuation of the Bush presidency. So I am not surprised.
@lulu,
I liked your post that brings up the distinction between “telegeneity” and “political prowess.” Only time and responding to live questions will tell which quality Palin may lay claim to.
The strange circle jerk that is Alaska goes like this:
We have some of the highest costs of living in the U.S., not always the highest energy costs but it’s getting there.
The high cost of oil puts massive amounts of Tax Revenue into State coffers.
When the State coffers runneth over, the State spends spends spends which usually creates jobs.
The job of the State (and it’s elected officials) is to marry the State spending on such projects with Federal matching funds – even if the State has the ability to pay for the project in it’s entirety.
Lots of Alaskans have been asking why we’re “outsourcing” the building of this natural gas pipeline at all.
The Permanent Fund has a balance of well over $30 billion.
http://www.apfc.org/home/Content/home/index.cfm
Many Alaskans believe that by building a State owned (therefore owned by Alaska residents) gas line is the ONLY way to secure some fiscal stability in the schizophrenic energy market.
I’m somewhere in between and I think its’ bullshit that they are building a pipeline that will service the processing of Alberta’s Oil Sands to the exclusion of U.S. consumers.
Proud2BUSA
Those of us who have paid attention to what we’ve been doing in that part of the World saw what was coming before the illegal invasion, let alone a long stay in Afghanistan after 9/11.
We were lobbying against the support our government were giving to Saddam, as well as helping install him and put him on the CIA’s payroll, and especially the support after he went after Iran, by than the Iranians were already royally pissed at us for the coup we engineered.
We now Don’t have many friends in that part of the world except those who know they can make a buck off us, alot of bucks, and they just act like friends,
Nope it’ll take a Long time to get anything we had back, the only way for even minor contact will be through the NGO’s and the few who worked with us and those before willing to work again, but the Chinesse and Russian will cover that base Quickly!
She’s being used. I agree with an earlier post, that she will NOT be a player. They had to go with someone who had the time to build relationships or allies on the Hill. That way, they can alienate her within their own Party. What they would do is allow Palin to go out and make “stump speeches” about how hard McCain and his goons are working – she would go out and talk in her double-speak about the plans of the United States, and then finally, she would be “called” to go out and explain to the American people why all of our rights have been taken away.
Do you guys in 2005 when Bush was accused of saying the “….constitution was just a ********** piece of paper?” His administration has tried to take away and change more ammendments to the Constitution than ANY OTHER PRESIDENT IN HISTORY. Now, we all know that W ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed. . . neither is Palin. . . NEITHER IS MCCAIN. The goons behind this are smart. They’ve got these blind ambition people by the……(fill in your blank)…..who will do whatever bidding it takes to keep them in a powerful slot. . . all the while, they have NO power.
Who is W going to talk to after his time in office? Do you think he’ll be offered a professorship? Not. He’s been used to Rove and Cheney’s objectives. Time to go back to Big Daddy’s Ranch. When your OWN PARTY doesn’t want you there and has to go back 20 YEARS to recall Reagan, that should be a pretty loud sign.
@proud2busa…..I think your comments are eerily playing out quietly behind the noise of babygate etc…
A couple of links (big stories in Europe vis. US and Russia/Georgia) but I haven’t seen this angle in US papers.
The times reported a couple of weeks ago that the Russians had evidence of US military presence during the SOuth Ossetia saga and Putin accused Bush of stoking the conflict to get Mccain elected…at the time I just thought, ooohhh that crazy Putin… http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4628711.ece
This in The Times today re. Dick Cheney visit http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4682003.ece
This about Russia increasing nuclear aid to Iran to bait US
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4692237.ece
So My friend proud2busa,,,,,you could be on to something. So much goes on behind the scenes that we don’t know about…it’s like trying to complete the puzzle with loads of pieces missing:(
This whole Russia situation adds to my unease over the mcpalin ticket…your repubs are sinister. Anything to win!
To JimStaro –
Then do you think the Republicans are smart enough to realize that we have no friends anymore, and that destroying our own country is the only way to supply energy for a brief amount of time?
Yucky, yuck – we could even play this out like a science fiction movie that Caribou Barbie is here to bend our minds with “…we must procreate, we must procreate…” for the impending army of doom called the United States. Yuck. I’m voting for Obama and HOPE; how about you?
some more ” funnies ” I found
http://change-obama08.blogspot.com/2008/09/funnies.html
Thanks for your response All I Saw. I’d love to visit there someday.
Proud2BUSA, I agree she is being used. But I have a feeling they don’t know what they are getting into. I think she will be harder to handle than they suspect. She is a narcissist and she may shake up Washington, just not in ways they imagine.
Just wrote a long post that’s disappeared…canbe bothered to rewrite but gist was in agreement with proud2busa on Russia/Iran/Georgia, war talk escalating before elections. Bush stoking violence to help Mccain win election etc. From The Times (one of our most respected papers here)
America, don’t be scared though.
Links below
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4628711.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4692237.ece
AK: I have a question about those men having wedding rings
tattooed on their left ring finger. What is that about? Anyone?
Can you do an editorial about that?
thanks to the poster for the LA Times article.
i kept thinking about the old saying re: rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. i think its that same previously un-energized 35-40%, is now the energized 35-40%
but no, we cannot be complacent. get out the votes.
Well, Shootfire, JT, I already the next installment of Austin Powers in my head!!!
Palin would be the fembot. What was it Dr. Evil’s lesbian lovers used to scream? “Bring in the ..BOTS!!!!!”
Obama would be shaggadelic, and we could cryogenetically freeze all the evil until we could conquer it. Of course, this means that we would have bad teeth, but I’ll take bad teeth over the Apocolypse any time!!!!
If you want a pretty good look at McCain’s voting record as to Veterans and Military visit this post at my site I put up quickly yesterday morning about a press conference at 11am yesterday at Walter Reed by Veterans of IAVA and VoteVets. I posted it on a few boards like KOS also.
You can get the bill numbers, it’s from a quick Media Advisory we got, they had link backs I didn’t have the time to embed those into mine, there’s also a BVideo Ad and I added the comments of two of the OIF and OEF Veterans that spoke, they did so just as Hannah was hitting Washington.
Judi B
I have a tattoo my husband does not.
I have no clue about the ring finger thing, I’m totally opposed to all thing tattooed and permanent that reflect a commitment to anyone but your children =-)
Oh it’s a rather Long Post.
M–thank you again. and thanks everyone for the links they are awesome! i love this blog.
as far as the polls, i also agree that the people that are included in those numbers are land line owners. an enormous number of obama supporters have only cell phones.
please look into early voting, i was talking with someone at the campaign who told me early voting was the safest way to know your vote will be counted. also, volunteer at your local polls if you can. they will try to steal this one too. no doubt they will try.
Then do you think the Republicans are smart enough
Well if you can find a Republican I’d have to see, those using that political label, NO, but hopefully you’ve gotten that jist after these past 7yrs., that was going on from Nixon, raced some more forward under Raygun, than went Bonkers with Newt and the others!!
is there a place that is keeping a list of “Palin-gates”? these are all really hard to keep up with.
by the way, the most brilliant thing i’ve read is “theoconservative” or “theocon”. someone used it here to describe palin. absolutely fabulous!
May I ask who is the person from Lompoc, California?
It is a small mountain town in near Santa maria and I used to live there.
I lived on the AFB , Vandenberg
Would love to know who you are?
JimStaro – this is an excellent blog. Thanks for sharing. My question is WHY ARE MORE VETERANS NOT OUT ON THE STREET PROTESTING? My friends are completely dismayed by the lack of treatment. Suicide rates are at an all time high for our soldiers, many because they are unsure of what they are fighting for. . . the big question is HOW DO WE HELP THESE HEROES? WHY ARE THEY NOT PROTESTING (that would be a huge media story) versus allowing just a few Vets appear to represent the entire military (which is inappropriate from my memories). It’s apparent and painful. . . how do we get this faction up and moving?
Proud2BUSA (13:47:46) :
…The goons behind this are smart. They’ve got these blind ambition people by the……(fill in your blank)…..who will do whatever bidding it takes to keep them in a powerful slot. . . all the while, they have NO power…
—————————————-
Spot on analysis. Palin is a mark. She is either a borderline personality or a ratcheted down straight forward narcissist personality disorder. GWB was also. We are in Manchurian Candidate territory here. I have been stunned for years. Now they go and do it again. And the dumbed down rural fundamentalist nation keeps buying it. Meanwhile the money goons behind this (I don’t believe in top down brutally efficient conspiracy theories – only predatory conspiracies of people following their economic business self interest) are cleaning up all the way to off shore banks. The sub-prime lending rape of the nation is just one example of many.
War and economic plunder. Where will it all end? Now they trot out a dying old man and a woman off the top of a wedding cake. How much more can we be insulted as hard working Americans who are seeing our nation be utterly destroyed by the Rovian assault upon everything our forefathers built? I believe we have lived and are still living through what happened in Nazi Germany. Remember what this tastes and feels like. Brutal manipulation of people by stage management. We have to end this now. We all know that here. But it is just sickening that any of this ever happened.
GWB and Palin were and are Manchurian Candidates. And they expect us to be this dumb? It is an insult to our intelligence. But it HAS WORKED up until this moment. GWB got re-elected in 2004 in the midst of a military debacle.
How do we reach the swing voters? Can the 5% racist vote and the “Obama is a Muslim” assault on reason have any chance? I wish I knew. This is what keeps me geared up. We all have to try our best to talk sense to people over the next 58 days.
I hate to tear away from this blog but I have a life calling. . . the good news of the day is my son (who WILL BE ABLE TO VOTE THIS YEAR) is saying all of his friends are going Obama.
TRIG PAXSON VAN PALIN, born to Sarah Louise and Todd Mitchell Palin of Wasilla on April 18. He weighed 6 pounds, 2 ounces.
Now Trig is listed:
http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2008/05/06/local_news/new_faces/doc481ffb5722548564626298.txt
Is it possible that Sarah is at the peak of her popularity? I know they’re going to ration her appearances and make it a rare sighting like, say, a yellow-bellied sap sucker. But truly, can it last? She can’t buy off the American public like she has Alaska.
Sign me, Hopeful in Minnesota
NOT that I am obsessed with this tawdry element of the campaign, and I haven’t been able to read all the posts yet, but I can hazard an accurate guess about the date Bristol will “miscarry”…
Either the day before, or the morning of, the VP debates.
You heard it here.
http://warner.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/04/the-mirrored-ceiling/?em
Apologies if this has already been posted– it’s getting hard to keep up with the traffic here. This is Judith Warner’s piece in the NY Times (about as msm as it gets) on SP. The comments are also interesting.
“Van Palin”?
Seriously? XD
WHY ARE MORE VETERANS NOT OUT ON THE STREET PROTESTING?
We are, but most of it we’ve given over to those presently fighting or new Veterans, also remember those hitting the streets are considered Focus Groups by whittle georgie, most of our work is done with others through this technology, where we’ve been able to garner a quicker change in mindset but also to readily pass along information and actions and quickly organize Rallies etc.
IVAW is the Rapidly growing Anti-War Veterans organization but IAVA, VoteVets are as against the occupations but not as outspoken, they work within the system and lobby.
Proud2BUSA: I mentioned the oil issue the other day in another thread and heard the online equivalent of crickets. The Peak Oil/world resource issues are the biggest issue (unspoken) in the campaign. No one wants to talk about it, as it is scary. But this is why this election is so critical, we have to move forward in the area of alternative energy for climate change, for Peak Oil, for our kids and grandkids. The candidate that doesn’t get this can’t be president, in my view.
Here is is again:
I was out and about at a school workday today and among the women there the topic of Sarah Palin came up. Most were happy at the idea of a woman being named to any significant position anywhere, but then ran up against her social/cultural views and her lack of executive experience coupled with John McCain’s age/health. A couple of people said to me, ‘Well, of course, it’s all about the oil.’ A light bulb went on for me.
Maybe AKMuckraker can comment about the oil issue…most of us know Alaska as an oil-producing state, first and foremost. And ANWR, of course, has gotten a lot of press in the past few years, and is obviously a political football and highly symbolic of the policy differences between Dems and Repubs. ‘Drill, drill, drill!’ being chanted at the convention this week just adds to that argument. In fact, I think I can go so far as to say that the left is associated with alternative/renewable energy and transition to it, and the right with status quo, regardless of climate change. That’s a big regardless.
The panic at the pump when gas hit $4/gallon this year made me realize that probably most people don’t feel they can do much one way or the other with regard to global warming/climate change without government help. Obviously many don’t believe in it, or downplay human beings’ role in it. But if gas starts to go up in price, or the cost of a barrel of oil hits $200, well, then our economy starts to have troubles. Didn’t Osama bin Laden predict this, for pete’s sake? We’ve had a taste of it this past year, and indications are that these may continue.
To me, the big elephant in the room during this election is the need to address this and to come to grips, at both policy and cultural levels, with the concept of Peak Oil and renewable transition. Yet you won’t find it discussed in depth in the MSM. On the web, and in quite a few books, there is tons of speculation about it. One web site I find interesting is The Oil Drum (link below).
We know that individual countries, such as our own, have reached their own oil peaks. It is hard to know when the whole world will, as data is confused and conflicted and hidden by various countries because of political interests. There’s a lot more on this topic, The Oil Drum has a presentation I will link below. Some say we have reached Peak Oil, some say in the next ten years. Either way, that will have a dramatic impact on the entire world. NSA documents I found a couple of years ago online paint a dramatic picture of worldwide death, famine, resource wars, and the breakdown of society, similar to and coupled with the effects of climate change. But of course, the government won’t say that in public. However, they have been making geopolitcal decisions regarding oil for some time now. The biggest has been Iraq, despite what people may contend. Sarah Palin from Alaska is part of that picture, too.
While we have been distracted by Palin, the Bush administration has extended aid and NATO membership potential to Georgia. Think it is out of the kindness of their hearts? No, Georgia is extremely strategic in regard to Russia, which like Iraq, is a huge oil producer/owner.
Since oil was discovered during the 1860’s, the US and the West have lived in a time of untold convenience and bounty while we have cheap oil. It permeates every area of our lives, and to live without it would change things dramatically, not the least of which would be ending the industrial food chain, something I think is killing us all anyway, but that’s just part of the picture.
I find it interesting how no one talks about this, and it is relegated to Internet conspiracy theorists and the left’s ‘communist leanings,’ even when you can see that it defines, sub rosa, both our foreign policy and our domestic agenda. I ask myself, ‘Why wouldn’t you try to conserve and develop alternative technologies to save what we can, mitigate climate change, and be at the forefront of the biggest technology transfer in our lifetimes? The latter at least fits to some degree with the runaway globalized capitalism we live in and around.
This is a lot of info but what do you folks think? I guess it just doesn’t fit the conservative narrative, which is endless consumption and endless growth, deregulation of industry, untrammeled Manifest Destiny. But we are running up against our lifeline, our planet. The McCain and Obama campaigns have their energy plans, but they don’t talk at all about how life will change if we enter into an era of Peak Oil. We will enter into an entirely new world for which the past 100 years gives us, and our children, little or no preparation and a significantly depleted planet. Think about it, what if your energy sources for living were cut off or changed over the next 10 years. What would you do?
Palin fits into this narrative as someone who is part of the traditional mindset, which is that energy comes from oil and gas companies. Where else does she fit in?
http://www.theoildrum.com/tag/overview
http://www.theoildrum.com/
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080902.wvox0903/BNStory/energy/home
http://www.twilightinthedesert.com/
You may have heard of this book, ‘Twilight in the Desert,’ about where the Saudis really are with oil.
There are tons more books out there. The point is, this is a significant situation, about which there is enough data to know that the status quo won’t work for much longer, and that all of the renewables will still lead to a significant change in our lifestyles. Al Gore knows this, that’s why he’s proposing a technology transfer in 10 years, to address the ‘hydrocarbon twins,’ climate change and Peak Oil.
This is why, to me, this election is so important. I wish our political process could lead to an open conversation about this issue that doesn’t relegate to a deep green lefty conspiracy, communism, or the usual establishment criticisms. I have great hopes for the resilience of the world, but the political process we have does not give me great hope. Thoughts about McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden in this context are welcome.
http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/
spread it around…needs to be seen
Nine bows to AKMukraker for providing a haven of sanity for those of us seeking refuge from the latest GOP nightmare. I’ve been an avid reader since the Veep selection broke. And to all of you posters– I’ve never run across such an intelligent, witty community that makes me want to read every last comment. I watched the McCain speech with a friend, we went for a walk around the lake to clear our heads of the vile straight-up lies of the “Mavrick,” and I came back to 827 comments from the debate I needed to catch up on. Phew. Needless to say I was up late!
What I really appreciated from the comments in the Palin Veep thread was how many people were talking about donating, volunteering, and/or registering to vote Dem for the first time. I can only hope you folks represent the numbers out there to counteract the new Palin devotees. I would love to hear more from moderate Republicans, Independents, and Christian values voters who aren’t falling for the Palin pander, and those living in swing states. I got a little teary hearing from the Vets out there, relieved to know that not everyone supposedly in the bag for McCain is getting duped by GOP lies.
I’ve been rotating nonstop this week between mudflats, andrew sullivan, the jed report, and fivethirtyeight.com. I highly recommend 538 for its polling numbers and analysis. I would really discourage any undue optimism about Obama’s chances at this point– McCain’s surge ahead of Obama in national polls today made my stomach turn. Yes, we could see the convention bounce slide back, but it is looking like a horse race, and we have yet to see the Republican attack machine come out in full force. Of course it will come down to state polling– who cares if McCain got a bump in red states– but we haven’t seen new state polls since the Palin announcement & GOP convention, so those of you suggesting there’s been no movement in swing states aren’t going on hard data, to the best of my knowledge. I will bet you that some of those swing states have become much tighter in favour of McCain. Not to say we can’t beat some of them back, but it’s going to take nonstop effort here on out.
We should all have learned from 2000 and 2004 that it’s not enough to assume people will come to their senses and listen to reason. We have to figure out ways to counter the GOP lies, yes, but in ways that appeal viscerally, not just intellectually, to voters. We’ve got quite the brain trust going on in this blog, so I welcome everyone’s suggestions on both of these fronts. I am of course praying for the Nat’l Enquirer to pull out a doozy of a scandal story, but unless they come out with proof on babygate, nothing is there but speculation. It’s the economy, stupid. And the supreme court. And the environment. And the war. We can’t let these two people wrapping themselves in the flags and maverickdom get away with the spin when their voting and policy records are atrocious and firmly in the pockets of Big Oil and special interests.
A shout out to Mil for the Bene Gessert Litany Against Fear! One of my all-time favourites. Gotta love a blog where you can find that and Moby Dick and Shakespeare excerpts in the mix.
AKMudraker, enjoy your much-deserved break. I too must now attempt some of the neglected work and household duties that my mudflats addiction has tossed aside this week. Onward, mudflat soldiers!
GOP sets out on Inclusiveness Tour 2008:
White Agate, I read with interest your oil post on the other thread, and I’m sorry I didn’t take the time to comment on it then. Thank you for this in-depth analysis.
White Agate:
You’re right, it is peak oil and the fear with that, but We’ve Been Talking Alternatives for Years and the Pols have been using that like Abortion to get votes with little done, Now many know the time has come or it’s past and we’re in real deep do-do.
If we had used a quarter to a half of the intelligence that brought about this technology and it’s tools the last 10years we’d be Oil Free right now and it wouldn’t have hurt this technology one iota, not even slowed it down. But the old mind Oil wealth has been blocking the move forward to squeeze out every last drop of wealth!
Want to fight down and dirty? I posted a version of this the other day. It bears repeating. Here’s a shortened form.
Just so you know … I am a woman who started my adult life in the 70s. I am a feminist. I am also a realist. And so I’ve come up with a little patter that I talk to other women about. I have to do whatever I can to keep S. Palin out of office. It is my mission. To that end, I will do whatever I have to do.
To every woman I encounter right now, I comment on Palin. I comment on the fact that women can do anything. Then I comment on the fact that there are times in your life where you are better able to take on big challenges. Then I start a conversation about Sarah’s choice of timing, and that it seems odd to me that she was determined to take this up now, instead of 4 years from now when her baby is older and when it would not have put her 17-year-old pregnant daughter in the limelight. With just a little encouragement, every woman agrees that her rotten timing is indicative of really bad judgement. (That she blindsided her daughter with the notoriety is beyond me. I think it shows reckless ambition and a self-centeredness that’s just beyond the pale.)
Anyway, it’s a successful way to talk about it. It works. There’s nothing about this woman that makes her qualified to be VP of the US. If I have to appeal to the base instincts of people to keep her from getting into office, then that’s what I am going to do.
Harley:
While that site looks inviting, Don’t Use It, Sampley is a Royal Nut Case, he’s also part of the ‘swifties’, his persona is to make a living off of slamming the likes of Kerry, who he can’t stand, and even McCain, who he also can’t stand.
He’s been around a long time and us ‘Nam Vets keep beating his crap down but he attracks the racist and elements like that!
So Please Don’t Use That Site, You’ll Lose Support For Obama Rather Than Against McCain!!!!!!
Oh, and about Peak Oil. McCain/Palin/Cheney/Bush are all on the same oil team: DRILL, BABY, DRILL. Rape the planet for profit. Drill, baby, drill. Get as much $$ as fast as you can. I don’t think we’ve reached Peak Oil yet (just my opinion–I think we’re 10 years away) so they are gonna get those Big Oil Bucks as fast as they can set up shop.
Obama/Biden have an understanding that it is going to take a trifurcated approach to get us going on alternative energy (natural gas, electric cars, gradual end of gasoline based cars). It will actually create MORE jobs but it scares Big Oil as it won’t all be with their involvement. (My 2 cents, anyway…)
Someone posted it is better to early vote, to ensure the vote will count. How is that? To me it would seem mail in ballots, and early voting is a sure way to change someone’s vote. Am I missing something?
white agate-
i read michael rupperts book “crossing the rubicon”
he places us at or past peak oil.
i had some questions with his overall thesis, but his research was impeccable. i have used the book many times as a reference, it has an amazing index.
I have it on good authority that the citizens of Alaska paid for a special tanning bed for Sarah Palin installed in the Governor’s mansion at no small expense (special contract because of wiring issues in an older structure). So is this what Alaskans consider an appropriate tax payer funded expense? Is this what your “reformer” governor who is fighting financial fraud and abuse does with your money?
Look at Peak Oil this way.
It takes Years to compress to turn whayever into oil, YEARS and YEARS.
Now look at how fast we’ve been burning it, using it to make products, and just plain wasting it, like oil spills etc..
Now go back to the YEARS it takes the planet to Compress, simple math will tell ya we’ve got to be at or very near peak, we’ve already pumped out most of the reserves here, reason we do more Mountain Topping for Coal, and how many times have you heard of Huge Reserves being found as the Technology has grown, and any found only gives very short time relief!
Thats incredible anonymous.
She does seem mighty tan for someone with an “indoor” job.
If that is true, it is self absorbed in the extreme.
Check out this article, that goes into more detail on Palin’s obsession about her brother in law:
http://www.pubrecord.org/nationworld/299-documents-suggest-palin-obsessed-over-retaliating-against-ex-brother-in-law.html
answers about early voting
https://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php
Bristol’s bellybutton is showing in one of the family portraits. Too tired to try and find the link. It is the picture of her with the tight jumper (green). Photo I believe was taken in Feb. The only time your navel is that evident is when you are pregnant.
i posted something earlier to crickets too…
SP said something in her debut speech about energy independence and (sorry for paraphrasing days later) and that it was tied up in alaskan oil.
my first thought was, if we had that much, why is this such an issue the? i think like lulu says, its drill drill as long as we can pump the money.
i see t. boone pickens and have mixed feelings, although any step in the right direction is good. he has absolutely been part of the oil problem (and a swift-boater to boot!) and has never supported any candidate that wasn’t totally pro-big oil. so, now that he’s had his revelation, he refuses to be “political” even though those he has always supported do not support this venture of his.
so SP’s “independence” was just a speech soundbyte, no one’s called her on it. and they all clapped.
sometimes i feel like only high gas prices will get folks to pay attention.
Here’s another great article that details Palin’s turbulent first year as Mayor:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008163431_palin070.html
J T (13:55:32) :
Proud2BUSA, I agree she is being used. But I have a feeling they don’t know what they are getting into. I think she will be harder to handle than they suspect. She is a narcissist and she may shake up Washington, just not in ways they imagine.
—————————————-
JT, I think you are more correct on this point than anyone yet fully realizes. She showed no real judgment in life AT ALL in taking the offer to be VP in the first place. This breathtaking fractal of habitual lifetime behavior as a character trait is now going to expand. Only now this is the Big Leagues. To play in the Big Leagues you have to work up to it and know how to handle yourself. She things the powers of heaven are on her side. They aren’t.
Hitler was a narcissistic, banal person, with an extreme ideology. In his early years he was a joke. He learned how to neutralize his opponents. NEVER underestimate these people in their time and place in whatever society or political situation where they are given power. She is a banal person. Unless she can get a hold of herself through sudden self study and insight, trouble will first start to show up on the banal level. Yep… I fear at the absolutely absurd level of the Glen Close’s character in “Fatal Attraction”. I hope it starts there and not with what to do in Iraq with the lives of U.S. troops in the field at stake! If she truly is a driven narcissist with no psychological system of restraint, conflict may first surface with Cindy McCain. Or maybe she will manipulate Cindy to side with her (a la the 1955 French film Les Diaboliques IN REVERSE) some conflict against Grand Father. Remember how Hitler waited until Hindenburg keeled over to start to make his move.
As some people have noted here on Mudflats it actually wasn’t so touchy/feelie on stage after McCain’s speech last Thursday now was it?
All I Saw,
So true! The neo-cons really do believe that government IS the “enemy.” Even the Christian Right attend churches where pastors preach about changing the “evils” of government.
Lulu:
Right on. I still think it comes down to the economy, climate change/Peak Oil, and that we are all in this together. We live in a diverse society that needs compromise, and good government is part of the way this has to happen. Notice my qualifier. Progressives/liberals have always known this, which is one of the reasons we find it so hard to organize. We recognize that people have their own thoughts and ways of dealing with things. This kind of philosophy takes true leadership to bring it together and move forward constructively.
David Frum (the GOP speechwriter, etc.) wrote this piece today about the ‘vanishing Republican voter.’ Apparently if its subject is news to him, he’s been holed up in his office at the AEI for too long. The rest of us have known this, lived it, for years.
Of course, he only mentions ‘growing inequality’ when it starts to cost his party some votes, never mind those whose houses have been repossessed. Can you say ‘What’s the Matter With Kansas?’
I think a close reading will reveal some strategy points for Dems.
What happens after the national focus is no longer on Alaska? Will there be a national edition of Mudflats?
About McCain’s reaction to her last Thursday, I agree. He’s embarrassed by her. Let’s face it: almost everyone is embarrased by her except the Fundies. I suspect even some GOP Alaskans are saying in private circles how embarrassing she is.
Look, the woman can’t pronounce “nuclear” without it being spelled out on a teleprompter. Even after so much was made about Bush not being able to pronounce it.
Hey, that’s probably another reason McCain doesn’t like her. She reminds him too much of GWB himself!
Great Video Posted At KOS!!!
You Gotta Watch This:
BREAKING VIDEO – Obama appeared at the RNC!
You REALLY Gotta Watch This!!
Hubby says I have t relax or this election is going to give me a heart attack.
Be back later, we are going out for a walk.
I know I am not very prolific when it comes to writing, but I soak up every word on here.
Can’t wait to read more mudflatian goodies !
My youngest is voting for the first time too, and she’s strongly Obama. And she can’t stand Palin!
jimstaro- that’s great!
(also reminded me of jon stewars joke, giving the finger to the nation with that stage!)
scratch that previous post, saw the link to the video
thanks! have added it to me blog !
now about that walk……….laterz mudflatians
( yep I really am 52 but but me knoz me slang LOL )
Just heard Rick Sanchez on CNN quote the line:
“Jesus was a Community Organizer, and Pontias Pilate was a Governor.”
I remember reading that quote on this site early last week (seems like months ago now!), posted by MH via metafilter.com
It came up after Rick replayed the segment of Rudy’s speech – when making fun of Obama as a community organizer, followed by much LAUGHTER by the Republican delegates…grrrrrrrr! Oops! I don’t want to sound like a pitbull with lipstick!
Wanna watch the Video Again and Comment that’s the link back to the KOS post now on the Recommend list!!!
I am now waiting for hubby to get off the phone with a call from his brother in California.
Just saw what you wrote jimstaro, I am assuming you meant the vietnamveys against McCain.
I had no idea.
I WILL heed your warning.
I want NOTHING to do with McCain winning this election.
Consider it done and thanks for the 411
In a sane world , there’s no way in hell that this lightweight Talibangelical with a grating voice makes even the first cut as a VP candidate . Only in America , where there are just enough half-wits , Crooked USSC justices , and Diebold voting machines to select GWB twice would this be remotely possible .
In honor of Caribou Barbie , I fired up the photo suite program .
This one is kinda raunchy , so if you’re the sensitive type , don’t look.
oops typo….another confirmation of me being the WORST typist on the planet!
I have 3 voting for the first time, and we are all going together! They are excited! I believe if everyone take their young adult’s who are voting for the first time, will be something historical!
It has now been removed from blogroll, again, thanks for the 411, I can trust mudflatians to help me !
Harley:
Sampley and McNeil, and a few others, are peas of the same pod, AssHoles!!
They’ve been spreading Crap for years Denigrating not only their service in ‘Nam, which for some reason they don’t see, except they make a living off it, but they Slander All Of Us Who Served There, McNeil was Nixon’s boy, Sampley not sure about back than but he did come out of the gates around the same time!
These two are the best “morph” images I’ve seen.
McBush:
Dream Ticket:
In keeping with AK’s Sunday newspaper theme, I thought I’d contribute a poem that was written by Rina Ferrarelli many years ago as a tribute to Joan Benoit, the 1984 Olympic Marathon Gold Medalist and one of the finest American women runners of our time.
The poem reminds me very much about the best qualities of Barrack Obama’s run for presidency which has been one of the longest election marathons in history. Enjoy.
———————————————
During the third mile
not the eighteenth as expected
she surged ahead
leaving behind the press
of bodies, the breath
hot on her back
and set a pace
the experts claimed
she couldn’t possibly keep
to the end.
Sure, determined,
moving to an inner rhythm
measuring herself against herself
alone in a field of fifty
she gained the twenty-six miles
of concrete, asphalt, and humid weather
and burst into the roar of the crowd
to run the lap around the stadium
at the same pace
once to finish the race
and then again in victory
and she was still fresh
and not even out of breath
and standing.
———————————————————
It is time to to start our kick Mudflat’ers! We’re in the final homestretch!
We can make a difference!
Write, call, blog, volunteer, donate, vote!
Harley,
Listen to hubby. Take a break. We need you in the long run. Your posts are thoughtful. We need them. I am going for a walk now too. We ALL need to pace ourselves. 58 days until we, hopefully, can all sleep in peace after the bombshell of Fateful Friday.
I didn’t see this mentioned so thought I would.
Obama and McCain have agreed to make a joint appearance at the 9-11 site next week. I was wondering if there might be something we could do, collectively, PATRIOTICALLY, as Obama supporters (the candidate who has taken the high road) to show respectful to the families of the victims, as well as the United States of America. Please share any interest/ideas.
Real quick, YOURS http://imagineaworldof.blogspot.com/
has been added to my blogroll Jim.
You have an amazing site !
I am happy to help promote our veterans in any way possible.
My blog is a simple collection of mostly other peoples posts and blogs.
It is the only way I knew how to promote the ones I like and keep track of what i read at the same time. I am no writer.
I hope it helps.
Phone call is done and hubby is at the door waiting for me…bbl
Thanks Harley, though I’m not a writer I use it to pass on Info and More, especially as to PTSD, Veterans Care, etc. etc., with abit of Politics thrown in.
Another talking point, and it is a minor one, is the copyright laws. The campaign, McCain’s, has constantly violated the copyright laws in regards to music. As a senator isn’t he suppose to obey all the laws in the land? And as a representative of our government why can he get away with disregarding this law but he wants computer users that download songs to obey the copyright law?
oh, mil…
thanks so much for reminding me of one of my favorite book series ever.
it’s time that i reread “dune”.
it somehow always gave me a sense of strentgh and power when i was at university.
Anonymous:
Laws they pass and you think they’ll obey them??
Only kidding, but actually serious, just look at All who have gone down, All the Laws of the Land and International Laws, we helped write, Broken!
Laws are to be Obeyed by the little people, Us!
Don’t know if this has been posted but the new issue of the NE is out on newstands now. Thought the McCain camp sent them a letter to not print it? (Insert sarcasm here)
Campaign donation statisic site. You can even look up celebs.
http://www.newsmeat.com/
John McCain the Mad Man
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/51660.html
McCain’s history of hot temper raises concerns
My son is only 8, redheaded and freckled and is extremely excited that Obama will be our first black President.
When asked why this is so exciting he replies: if he can do it – anyone can!
(He also thinks jelly comes from jellyfish and tooth fairy lives under tree fungus in the forest)
Hi all, I keep on posting about the oil issue and its effect on the election…my posts seem to end up in Muckrakers spam box. At this point really can’t be bothered to repeat…but start with this…Putin accusing bush of stoking to help mccains bid for white house. At the time I just chuckled and said to myself…”aahhh, that crazy Putin….”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4628711.ece
If this goes through I’ll send more and my thoughts later. Crux is, this could become the most critical election issue but is being drowned out by all the Palindrama…..So much going on behind the scenes that we’re not privy to.
Muckraker, can you shed any light on a rumor I heard recently? Upshot is that Track’s time in MI and his subsequent enlistment may have ulterior motives. I don’t want to repeat the details I’ve heard, but if even remotely related to fact, it’s even more obvious that something is seriously rotten in Palin-land. Court records might be a place to start looking, if that helps. Email me privately if you want/need any additional info.
Thanks for being there and a source of truth.
Cindy did NOT use the ridiculous “close to Russia” argument in extolling Palin’s “foreign policy expereince?”
Yikes…all that money and still so stupid!
I posted a comment on this blog last night, but I can’t find it, to see if there were any responses.
The gist of my other post concerned my having read on another blog that the Palins supposedly have amassed a net worth of $9 million — hard to do with the husband being a union worker and the wife being a public servant.
Interesting, if true. Where did all that money come from?
I don’t hear any clamor for the Palins to release their tax returns. All of the other candidates (even the Clintons) did, right?
Great blog. Greetings from NYC.
Is there any truth to the article by Charley James (link below…if it’s working now) that Palin called Obama a “Sambo?”
http://www.laprogressive.com/2008/09/05/alaskans-speak-in-a-frightened-whisper-palin-is-%E2%80%9Cracist-sexist-vindictive-and-mean%E2%80%9D/
i googled “lynn krueger alaska” and there were very few hits, only two directly relevant — the one listing the births titled “spring” something or other and the boxer rescue foundation in, i believe, alaska, which received a donation from a lynn krueger (http://www.boxerrescuefoundation.com/auctionhtml/donors.html).
another item that popped up brought up a question which our new friends in alaska can hopefully answer/shed some light on.
over at indecision 2008 a commenter says:
“I grew up with her – she didn’t used to talk like that! I can’t figure out why she does indeed talk like she lives in Fargo – we don’t talk like that here in Wasilla, Alaska and it freaks me out!”
http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/09/02/sarah-palin-saga-family-matters-in-alaska/
is this true?
i wondered about it as well because when she was announced her accent was reminiscent of minnesota and when she spoke at the convention she sounded just like minnesotans. i thought it distastefully reminiscent of george w(aste of space) bush and his put-on texas accent.
perhaps this is even post material — what do alaskans sound like? does it vary by geography? are native languages all similar to each other?
educate me, please!
For those of you interested in the oil issue… which should be EVERYBODY IN THE ENTIRE WORLD, consider that petroleum has usesfar beyond fueling our transportation means.
We use petroleum to make plastic, lubricants, fertilizers (let’s leave the organic issue aside for the sake of argument for now), and on and on. The Rocky Mountain Institute has done a lot of research on energy issues. Check out http://www.rmi.org. And they’re really into green building methods as well. Lots of great work done there. They look for ways that are both energy wise and make financial sense. Things like looking at pipe runs so that there’s less internal friction (so smaller pumps needed). They’re also the ones who developed the Hypercar. Uses a carbon fiber body that’s incredibly light and also far stronger than the typical car body. Less weight means less power needed to get the same effect. It’s a full-sized hybrid vehicle. So there’s a lot that we can be doing. But Big Oil obviously doesn’t want to lose their share of the pie.
We know drill baby drill isn’t the solution. But nobody’s talking about the role of the refineries in this supply chain. They can drill all the oil in the world, but if we can’t or won’t increase refining capacity, it’s like pouring water into a funnel. It can only come out the bottom so fast. And who controls the refineries? You guessed it — Big Oil. So, is it to their economic advantage to increase refining capacity? Not hardly. The more demand outpaces supply, the higher the price. Sure, demand growth in developing countries is part of the problem.
Why isn’t anybody talking about how we might better use the remaining supplies of crude than just burning it?
Former President Clinton extends an invitation to meet with Obama next week.
http://www.newsmeat.com/news/meat.php?articleId=32106638&channelId=2951&buyerId=newsmeatcom&buid=3281
Enough to give you nightmares:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
The article in case the picture is no longer on the main site:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/07/sarah-palin-george-bush-i_n_124654.html
predictably…Obama muslim video already doing the rounds with theory…”who wouldn’t correct their religion….if there wasn’t something sinister to hide?”.
Anyway, I’m Catholic, with an Anglican husband and friends from every religious background – Jews, muslims, stripy green people. I don’t see why we insist on making Islam a dirty word. There are extremists around the world from every religion fighting their own sick battles.
Autumn reading –
“All The President’s Men” reread is helping me a lot right now. Reminding me that a factor in the slowness of the unraveling was the widely held belief that no one could be _that_ stupid, that no one would _want_ to be that stupid, AND that no one could believe that the American people were _that_ stupid.
As I turned pages in past re-reads, I’d whisper “little hint, the guy _is_ a crook” but the book persists in unfolding in its bemused way.
Makes me wonder what the title of the book will be for election 2008, and how many election seasons will I be reading that one!
Karen, they are replaying the 2006 AK debate on Cspan – she doesn’t sound like a kid in the debate.
The only thing worse than the lies the Republican Party is spewing now is the number of Americans who believe them. No wonder we’re in such deep doo-doo.
Saracuda’s hubby wanted Alaska to leave the Union? if his wife’s elected, millions of us will want to leave as well.
I genuinely fear for our country’s future if the McCain-Palin double disaster team is elected. SP scares me more than Nixon and GW combined.
Hawk:
You know you bring up an Important Fact, that i hadn’t seen anybody else ask about, though someone probably has, She does need to Release her Tax records, wether they’ve hit the millons is anybodies guess untill we see, but I’m sure they’ve made bucks during her public?service?!!
I did post up on another thread here that Alaskans fairly close by the family should see if the young father is all of a sudden cash enhanced, if so he’s young, as is the future bride, they’ll be spending.
all i saw says above: “I happen to think a teenager who gets pregnant should have the baby – make that first hard choice of adulthood to put someone else’s needs above your own, keep it or give it up for adoption, either way you made your proverbial bed… lie in it.”
the problem is that what you propose is to punish the teenager AND another human being because the teenager had sex (i won’t even presuppose unprotected because, as they say sh!t happens). you offer a choice of punishments — to keep the baby or to give it away — but you refuse the “punishment” of having to undergo an abortion.
“you made your proverbial bed … lie in it.”
think about that.
a life sentence for two people (at a minimum) for a teenager who has acted thoughtlessly.
wow.
i don’t know about you but i think there are more than enough children born who do not have parents capable of or willing to parent them properly without bringing more into the world.
and to suggest as an “option” that a woman — no, a teenager, forced to carry a pregnancy to term GIVE HER BABY AWAY is callous and thoughtless.
i have never had children myself but i can imagine the horror that must reside deep in the heart of each woman who has been forced by circumstance to give her child away. as if it were an extra sweater. or an old toaster.
we have enough children who can’t find adoptive homes without needlessly swelling their ranks through an attempt to “punish” women for having sex.
it’s been said before but can’t be said enough:
if men could get pregnant, abortions would be available on every block.
I digress…LOL!!! And you lot thought Americans were the craziest! Leeza (Condi), Gadaffi’s “darling black african woman”, and her Locket in the kitchen
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0733176920080907?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews
Anyone know anything about this Drudge Report Headline?…..
NYT PREPARES TO FRONT EXPOSE ON PALIN’S BABY… DEVELOPING…
I read somewhere where her family made some money through gold mines. Is this true? I also read somewhere where the hubby doesn’t actually have to do any “real work”, just someone listed on the payrolls. Is this also true?
BobbyG said:
He also fumbled the “surge” thing with O’Reilly and continues to pay for that waffling response.
Bobby, yes, it was a fumble. My heart sank. This is why Dems get painted as “weak” and “scared.”
As I’ve said on this blog several times: He needs to forcefully state his opinion and sell it (or educate…same thing).
The indirect and waffling way he answered O’Reilly’s question “should we be ‘PREPARING’ for war with Iran?” SHOWS that his answer was “NO.” So here’s an idea: instead of a weak “no” and moving on to the next question, wouldn’t a STRONG “NO” which would have certainly brought follow-up questions from O’Reilly which would give him the oppty to educate the people why that’s a BAD IDEA and COUNTER to what even the REPUBLICAN party (formerly) stood for.
He did seem to recover later though.
@ From England,
Oh Good God! The same thing crossed my mind last month!!! And now they’ve put Palin in to double-detract. Please England, keep posting! Your link got through this time.
re: Autumn Reading:
This time of the year, I always enjoy watching 13 days in October. It kind of makes you wonder what things would be like if we acted in a more deliberative fashion.
And, to get me inspired, The Times of Harvey Milk!
Her home is extremely close to the Wasilla Sports Facility and today’s Anchorage Daily News, (Mat-Su) section reports on a proposed lakeside trail linking Lake Lucille, (that Palin’s home sits on) and the Wasilla Sports Facility.
Anyone in Alaska or familiar with Wasilla understands the utter lack of basic infrastructure, (like sidewalks) – both of these projects seem really excessive considering the larger needs of the area.
palingate, you shouldn’t read drudge report. it only encourages them.
“Someone posted it is better to early vote, to ensure the vote will count. How is that? To me it would seem mail in ballots, and early voting is a sure way to change someone’s vote. Am I missing something?”
a person at the obama campaign office in my city told me this. i’m voting absentee and he told me this was actually safer (after i made a joke about my vote not being counted [btw i’m in Indiana a swing state]). but honestly i’m not sure exactly why (maybe because there is a paper trail?). maybe someone here knows? i’ll see if i can find out then report back.
Caribou Barbie LOL!
How come she doesn’t come with a breast pump?
Would it be fair to guess ……… BYOP? Sorry too funny to nut have participated 😀
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/07/sarah-palin-george-bush-i_n_124654.html
George Bush in lipstick, too funny to keep to myself.
Rereading my post…I didn’t phrase that well. I hope you got my drift….
Bottom line: a direct and honest answer is stronger and more persuasive than a waffling answer.
http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008/09/unraveling.html
This made me sick.
Apparently there is new breaking developments about Track Palin.
One, he HAD to enlist it in the army–it was either that or go to jail due to him vandalzing school buses with some buddies.
The second story is so vile that I can’t bring myself to post it. But it explains why Track Palin finished his Senior Year in Michigan and not in Alaska, and it was hushe up.
The links are all there. It made my tummy drop.
Palmdale, CA (15:44:34),
I emailed Muckraker re some odd details of this ‘incident’ as well. Very familiar with the high school and ‘hockey’ situation in the town — there is far more to that stuff I am certain. If reported, the issue here is that the level of blind ambition/narcissism is a type of neglect.
Susan in Atl:
Everybodies been listening to the bushy for 7plus years, forceful intelligent answers not expected, plus one has to watch how it’s phrased, don’t want to get the label of a ‘Focus Group’ member or quickly slammed as Unpatriotic by the Super Patriots Wrapped In The Flag and Their Magnetic Ribbons with Purple Heart Bandages!
Oh please dear God…. let there be something to get rid of this national horror…
Anyone have any contacts?
drudgereport.com “NYT TO FRONT DETAILED STORY ON PALIN’S BABY, NEWSROOM SOURCES TELL DRUDGE… STORY DEVELOPING….”
GO Times!!
PJ, wow!! If all of this is true, there is no way McCain vetted her completely.
Is the stuff that the National Enquirer has been holding?
Everyone keeps wondering why nobody sees the truth about Palin, it’s b/c they do not want to. Looks like the dems might loose another election by assuming people are smart and reasonable. Why go on O’rielly? His viewers HATE you, no upside. So depressing.
Hi- can someone provide the link to the analysis of how Palin slashed special ed? Thanks-
“Caribou Barbie” is only the superficial image she wants to portray. Her management and leadership style is more like the “Wasilla Gorilla”.
i saw on fox news (forgive me) that palin interview with abc is set for thursday sept. 11 in alaska when he son ships off for iraq. i did a double-take but it was at the end of a report and was not repeated. i checked on abc news website and their report on the story says that “ABC News did not release details of when the interview would take place.” so i’m wondering where fox news came up with those details. has anyone heard more re:abc interview?
Lulu, Lulu, Lulu, give the lady a break — 8 years and W still can’t pronounce New-Klee-Er. And you think Caribou Barbie can learn in a week???
I was involved in the anti-nuke power movement in CA 30 years ago (solve the waste problem, please, before you build more plants), and one of the things they pounded into us was that we wouldn’t have any cred debating with the industry experts unless we learned how to pronounce it correctly. “It’s derived from NUCLEUS… it’s New-Klee-Er, not New-Cue-Ler.” That’s a real pet peeve of mine. I figure if you can’t pronounce it, you must not know much about it. Guess it goes to show how well I absorbed the “no cred” argument.
aarrgghhh….I can’t believe the rumoura re. Track. That would be too much for me.
the press is beginning to roll over already? this IS depressing.
http://www.reflectivepundit.com
/reflectivepundit/2008/09/to-counter-or-n.html
a blog i found interesting, by a media expert
i think we need to keep calling the media and push them to ask questions.
On Fox News right now they’re running a whitewash 1-hour program on Palin. Gosh, I didn’t realize what a paragon of virtue she is! How could I have been wrong all this time…
http://www.nationalenquirer.com/
New issue is out – the whole story is not online, you have to buy the paper (which I will do tomorrow for the first time in my life).
But read the beginning of the main story in the new issue —
PALIN WAR — TEEN PREGO CRISIS
White Agate,
Re: Frum’s article in NYT – thanks for posting. How self-serving of him to see inequality as a problem only because he believes it’s costing votes. And what a hoot – also recognizing the high cost of health care is a problem? He’d better be careful – he won’t be invited to the next republican convention.
Also interesting that he doesn’t seem too convinced of the value of teenage pregnancies. He should send a memo to Sarah.
richie,
ABC News’ Gibson lands first Palin interview
If Track did the second….WOW!!! I pray this is not true…if it is…how can anyone say…they are good, and loving parents!
i smell editing
Good grief! Now they’re bemoaning all the sexism directed towards Palin. Tell me, how sexist is it to have hundreds of men running around the RNC wearing buttons that say, “We have the hottest VP from the coolest state!”?
See if republicans do it, it is not sexism. If democrats do it, it is sexism.
The second story is so vile that I can’t bring myself to post it. But it explains why Track Palin finished his Senior Year in Michigan and not in Alaska, and it was hushe up.
The links are all there. It made my tummy drop.
to pj — What other story ?? I couldn’t find it – can you post a link or brief synopsis ?
Thanks !
Palmdale:
Absolutely…there is a lot we can do and should have been doing since the 1970’s. And there’s money in it, so it mystifies me that our government isn’t supporting green alternatives when they are hand-in-hand with every other profitable and not-so-profitable venture.
Then I guess you look at the role of ideology…I think the energy solutions issue is one of ideology. I mean, if you don’t believe in global warming, then I guess the m.o. becomes one of status quo. If you don’t believe in Peak Oil, then status quo. If you don’t think all of the hippies who have been saying solar is the way to go since the 1970’s are right, then status quo. If you think we need to change over to renewables before it’s too late but you can’t figure out how to make piles of money from it coming or going, then status quo.
Yes, we use oil/petrochemicals for just about everything, so Peak Oil is even more scary when you contemplate that. Since WWII, when we first used German-developed petrochemicals to make fertilizer and create the industrial food system, our world population has boomed and the world’s natural resources have been both polluted and put upon. The organic movement has called the question on the sustainability of industrial foods and whether or not they are healthy or even taste good. For me, the jury has decided on that one. Not for nothing is obesity an epidemic now, as well as cancer and high levels of body burden chemicals.
Bottom line, there is a lot we could be doing. The thing that keeps me up at night is, our political system is not made to address things before they reach disaster level. People have compared Peak Oil to WWII, as to how to prepare and come together for survival. My thing is, why wait for Pearl Harbor? Is that what our government will do? Leave the planning to the ‘war profiteers?’ Where does that leave the rest of us average citizens all over the world? Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Water is a huge issue, too.
Also agree about nukes.
She just pronounced Iraq “Eye-rack”!
Three issues:
1) About Track Palin: Okay, that rips it. Let’s just name Sarah Palin “Republican Mother of the Year” right now and to hell with the GOP’s perennial favorite, Andrea Yates and her runner-up, Susan Smith.
2) About Charles Gibson “interviewing” Sarah Palin: I am so glad that the GOP was able to find a eunuched “interviewer” for Sarah Palin. Charles Gibson (ABC), as we all remember, let Sean Hannity write some questions for Gibson to use against Obama, while he spoon-fed Hillary Clinton pablum question from a golden spoon.
3) Do not despair about the whitewashed stories on Palin. The media is running about 5 days behind, but in one newspaper’s case it’s because they are working on a story of their own that has not been outed yet. Yesterday I saw a pretty blistering hour on CNN repeatedly questioning McCain’s judgment in naming Sarah Palin as VP. In addition, I do not think the American people (outside of the most gullible GOP voters) are falling for it. This economy is hitting everyone bad, including investors, and people will always vote their pocketbooks. Doesn’t mean we have to stop working to get Obama elected, but just don’t let your energy get down over the spin from the GOP about how people just LOVE Sarah Palin.
There is a book by a man living in Nazi Germany “The Language of the Third Reich” – Victor Klemperer.
Redefining common words and phrases to mean something much darker and subversive was how the Nazi’s were able to convince the population to go along with them.
Eye-rack… Eye-ran… Eye-talian… she seems to get Israel okay tho!
PJ… PLEASE! The second story is about… ???
Seems like the Frontiersman is the only paper to report these two births…haylee and Trig.
Any other recent births sound familiar?(see link)
Any way to know when this article really first appeared?
http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2008/05/06/local_news/new_faces/doc481ffb5722548564626298.txt
white agate: thats why i really miss al gore
Introducing: My Fair Lady ~ Sarah Palin !!
Music: Isn’t she lovely…da..daa..da..
President Pimpin’ Mac ‘Daddy’ Cain & Sarah Palin: Now elected ’cause they look so good lookin’ together !!
My Fair Lady Sarah Palin: Oh… Mr President .. I’m bored.. I wanna go out and shoot some wild polar bears….
Mr President Mac ‘Daddy’ Cain: I’ll be right with you darlin’ [fixing his tie /clearing his throat and breaks into a smile] sure we can have those polar bears off that ‘threatened species’ list – just as sure as you can say John McCain is the most powerful man on this earth ~ you little pit-bull.. you.. gimme some lipstick..
Lady Sarah Palin: John – they’re saying – I had an affair –
Mac ‘Daddy’ Cain: Don’t you worry sugar buns – I’m gonna go out and take care of that confounded press ~ I am workin’ for you and don’t you forget it !!
My Fair Lady Sarah: And John-ny ~ they said that I did somethin’ wrong to that trooper !!
Pimp ‘Daddy’ McCain: My darlin’ we can take care of anything you like. Lipstick Lipstick Nose rub xx
Lady Sarah McCain: Ooooh!
[And Sarah went back to filing her nails and dreaming of the day she’ll be President – of course she really luvs Old John/Pimp Daddy McCain!!]
Oh my! I have missed so much in 2 hours!
to angreyXer:
I think there are MANY of us on this site who, until the conventions, were undecided. I consider myself a moderate (fiscally conservative/socially liberal). We’re regular church-goers – my son plays in the Praise Band, honor student, etc. We’re sound middle class – and yes, I, too am a member of the PTSA (however, not qualified to be Veep).
I care a heck of a lot more about competence than about gender, denomination or color.
I want someone who is President who is so passionate about our Constitution and our Bill of Rights that they’ll stand on their heads to support it.
I started with with Edwards, then moved over to Huckabee, then Hillary, and then I was stuck….a Huckabee/Meg Whitman ticket would have really had me stuck. I had heard about Obama and his cousin from Kenya, Osinga, as well as his “preacher problem.” It was time to sit down and know the issues, and not just vote from FEAR or the unknown.
McCain’s voting record is abysmal. As I stated earlier, in his first term he got tangled up with the Keating Five (which we’ve had to re-pay for YEARS) while Obama protected a core Constitutional Right all the way up to the Supreme Court.
I had to take time to understand what voting “present” in Illinois really means, as it is radically different than what we do in NC.
Being realistic about energy is important to me. America is so far behind in alternative energy solutions it’s embarrassing. We have innovative people out here jumping up and down trying to get attention, and they are continually blasted down by the Big Oil companies….think of an IPO trying to get the ear of Congress while they are being continually courted by Exxon.
The War with Iraq is embarrassing. It has cost American families the loss of 4000+ lives of promising young men and women, and countless others are in a much less fortunate situation than when they went in.
Olberman’s piece on the Death of Habeas Corpus did me in. I gained tremendous respect for Obama the more I read. Wow, here is someone who is truly willing to stand up for what he believes.
Using the POW experience for the sympathy vote did me in….I have INCREDIBLE respect for our Vietnam vets. For those who are not old enough to remember, the sentiment was wrong then – the vets felt like America was against THEM and not just the WAR. If you just KNEW how many of our men NEVER came home. . . we wore our POW and MIA bracelets for awhile, and then we slowly placed them away in a box and forgot about them, and went on with our lives. John McCain has obviously forgotten about them, too. I had dinner one evening with several executives from a financial services company – several there had served their country, and when they began to describe the VHA, the loss of benefits, the lack of respect from the Bush administration and his cronies – WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND COULD SUPPORT THAT especially as we run all these commercials “Be All That You Can Be” and barrage high school men with “enlist, enlist, enlist”?
John McCain is no longer a maverick, and even admitted he had no new ideas. Yes, he was earlier in his career, but he sold out about 2002. His thirst for ambition and power has now overtaken his desire to stand as a maverick and independent. to get to a maverick, you have to go to Obama.
JOHN MCCAIN HAS OVER 20 LOBBYISTS ON HIS CAMPAIGN. . . WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU ABOUT SELLING OUT? He is pandering to an extremist right group…WHAT DOES THAT TELL YOU ABOUT LISTENING TO ALL OF US?
The reality is that although Mr. McCain may believe what he’s saying, the truth is he won’t be able to deliver because he will be running up against too many people who have funded and supported his campaign. All of us have a price, and we now know his.
I like what Michael Moore said last Friday on Larry King: When you’re fixing your car and the wrench in your hand isn’t working, what do you do? You go get another wrench. . . so that’s the same in our Elections. We want change – why in the world would we vote for more of the same?
Sorry for the long diatribe, but I wanted to let you know you are not alone. There are many of us out here voting with our heads (and hearts toward America) and reading everything we can to make the most informed decision we can make.
Is that paper a daily paper, weekly, biweekly (every two weeks), or monthly paper?
I think it runs 3-4 times a week.
quote over at the Daily Dish… this is the Republican mantra.. and one we have GOT to change… we need to attack- not react. WE should be setting the questions and issues and direction…
Obama is smart… let us hope that they DO know how to throw a punch…
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about answers,” – Thomas Pynchon.
I live in a supposedly “toss up” state and have noticed something very strange lately.
Ever since Palin got the VP nod, I haven’t seen a single McCain sign anywhere. There used to be large clusters of them in various areas near my house but now– nothing. There are signs up for the Repubican running for Senate and some state and local races and some Obama signs, but no McCain signs.
Wonder what this is about…
I live in Wasilla and I can’t find any McCain signs.
My only guess is that people aren’t as politically addicted as I.
The other thing: one has to give their name to get campaign gear – I prefer to support and vote anonymously.
For your information
A fellow McCain POW who has known McCain since the academy did a well done thoughtful video in which he states McCain is not cut out to be president.
The video is worth watching as I believe the public has the right to know that probably this is one of the few men left alive who can rightly criticize in that category.
the repubs just don’t get it. they think putting a woman on the ticket automatically makes them immune to sexism. just because you are a chick, hire a woman, are friends with girls, or support a female candidate etc. does not make you immune to sexism. palin is a self-loathing female who has unabashedly stampeded through others and used the laboriously cleared path that was created by strong and courageous men and woman for her own gain. let it be known folks, she alone has the right to walk that path! she will do all that is in her power to destroy that road so that our daughters will be unable to go beyond her.
if you add your support to her you are absolutely the most vile kind of sexist. palin hides behind the guise of her gender while raping women’s rights. it’s disgusting really.
plwalsh,
Same thing here. No McCain signs anywhere! NONE! It’s almost kind of eerie. There are more and more Obama signs sprouting every day. My area is traditionally Republican, been has been moving toward blue the last few years.
All I Saw:
The point is there WERE McCain signs, lots of them. There was a huge cluster near the on-ramp to the interstate. They are all gone now.
In this state, it is pretty much free-for all what signs you put up on your own property. Nobody takes your name down or anything close to that. In 2004, there were about equal numbers of Bush and Kerry signs and many, many of each. Often the Bush and Kerry signs were door to door.
There are some Obama signs but not as many as there were Kerry signs. I haven’t done a systematic survey, but ever since the McCain signs near the interstate vanished I have been looking for others as I ride around. So far, I have seen none.
Friday night on Countdown With Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow spent almost the whole hour debunking the lies (yes, she used that word!) being told by Palin.
Here’s the link; you can watch the whole thing online:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/
I feel a little better, now…
Hey, can somebody in Wasilla take a picture of those no-show McCain signs & show the Obama signs sprouting all over? That would be make a fantastic viral!
There used to be “W” bumper stickers everywhere here – I think people scraped them off!
Usually we don’t see a lot of national campaign signs anyway – the local races dominate in that regard.
I have gotten to spend time in four different states recently, and I have to say, I have only seen two whole McCain bumper stickers in the past four months (and this includes Northern Virginia, Southern California, Central California, Ohio, and parts of Maryland).
Sorry – one more than to angryxer:
In every other war, the media has been allowed to tape the coming home of our brave soldiers who lost their lives. Bush/McCain stopped that. They didn’t want the American people “..getting upset..” –
so, when Palin/McCain tell you that we are “winning” a war that has changed criteria continously, ask them if Cindy Sheehan and other moms who have lost their sons to nominal media attention feel the same way. This gesture is something that just smacks as fundamentally wrong in my heart.
Um, I don’t see Obama signs either here in Wasilla.
But Obama fans are over enemy lines in this part of the state after Sarah’s nom.
Don’t worry, people here just choose not to advertise their politics… but they sure do vote when it counts!
Seems track did play for a team based out of Portage Michigan. Team NXI which is now S2 hockey which has a small announcement on their website.
“Congratulations to the Palin family
08-29-2008
Track Palin, alumni from the first Team NXI AAA Hockey team, mother, Sarah Palin was just selected as the vice presidential running mate for John McCain.”
I do find it ironic that on the team’s front page they post this “…While the ultimate hockey dreams of a majority of AAA hockey players may not be realized, S2 Hockey will be successful if its players learn life skills that allow them to be successful beyond their playing days.”
I still wonder why go with a first year start up team instead of playing for one of the many better known?
ALL I SAW wrote: “Her home is extremely close to the Wasilla Sports Facility and today’s Anchorage Daily News, (Mat-Su) section reports on a proposed lakeside trail linking Lake Lucille, (that Palin’s home sits on) and the Wasilla Sports Facility”
I know right where that is! I once stayed at the Lake Lucille Inn for a night.
Some thoughts:
* The Palins are NOT middle class; the worth of their investments is estimated at ~$9 million.
* Peak Oil is a MYTH perpetuated by the Illuminati to justify high gas prices
* Bilderbergers (the people who REALLY rule the world) have mandated $200-per-barrel oil prices
* Palin was absolutely CHOSEN by Big Oil, hence her insistence to stay at that “energy conference” in Texas (the day her “water broke”)
* Neocons LOVE government; just look at what Bush has done (largest expansion of fed govt. in history). Neocons are about MILITARY PROWESS and HEGEMONY, and they need a huge GOVERNMENT and MILITARY. (Straussian philosophy)
* 09/11 was absolutely an inside job, and I expect that the next “false-flag terror” event will be even larger, with more erosion of our liberties
intrigued – how do you know the Palins’ net worth? I read her job paid her $125K/year and he earned around $93K. Good living, but nowhere near $10MM. You have to make some mighty interesting investments to make that happen – even investing 30-40% of your net each year. That in and of itself is an interesting story, because the Fed is supposed to be pretty strict on that stuff. I’m “intrigued” – where are her investments? Who valued them? Are they onshore or offshore? Are they in her name or both her and her husband’s? Are they spinning money over to their childrens’ funds?
i am in Indiana. i have seen NO mccain yard signs, but several Obama signs. i have seen 1 mccain bumper sticker and again several Obama bumper stickers. Indiana leans red but is considered up in the air for this election.
ok…no disrespect but Palins are nowhere near 9 million dollars. Now we are just getting silly. I am feeling angry and frustrated, but I refuse to move into a complete alternate reality. I think we need to stick to what we know for sure. When we start saying anything we want….we only end up justifying everything the “right” says about us.
i’m in vanderbugh county IN (southern) in case anyone was wondering.
Does Alaska require public officials to present their tax records? If the net worth is as Intriqued says, the Capital Gains hit has to be newsworthy.
I don’t buy for a minute that the Palin’s are worth $9 million, this is a non-starter.
I wouldn’t say that 9/11 was an inside job. That would mean that the Bush administration was competent on something. And from what we have seen of this administration they are not competent. And then there is the 21st or 22nd hijacker that was arrested in Minnesota. He is probably more of a wannabe. I seriously doubt he was part of the plan. Then you have the audio tape that was recovered in Afghanistan where Bin Laden admits on tape that his plan succeeded , that he was surprised at the amount of damage it did. Go back to the first World Trade Center attack. He was determined to bring it down. Scientists recently released their findings on building seven. In those findings they stated that that building was brought down by fire. The first skyscraper built like that that was brought down by fire. The inside job angle is just a conspiracy theory that doesn’t advance anyone’s agenda.
http://tinyurl.com/57kaum
Obama camp raises $8 M since Palin speech
Posted: Thursday, September 04, 2008 5:35 PM by Mark Murray
The Obama campaign confirms to First Read that it has raised $8 million from more than 130,000 donors since Sarah Palin’s speech last night — and that it’s on pace to raise a total of $10 million by the time McCain speaks.
“Sarah Palin’s attacks have rallied our supporters in ways we never expected,” said Obama spokesman Bill Burton. “And we fully expect John McCain’s attacks tonight to help us make our grassroots organization even stronger.”
*** UPDATE *** The Wall Street Journal, meanwhile, is reporting that the RNC raised $1 million after Palin’s speech.
*** UPDATE II *** The Obama camp now says that it has crossed the $10 million mark.
“I hope she gives a speech every day until the election,” Burton says.
Now Mr. McCain’s net worth is another story! :0 And he STILL chose to use the $84MM in government funds to get himself elected!
The developing Drudge story about the Palin baby sounds interesting but it’s hard to imagine that it will be negative. He has been working overtime to promote Palin and bash Obama. Of course, if it was truly scandalous enough he would probably make an exception.
PJ,
What ‘second’ story are you referring to? I don’t see what you mean. (a strong hint will do) Thanks.
Thank heaven for Air America and other progressive radio…just saying
In every other war, the media has been allowed to tape the coming home of our brave soldiers who lost their lives. Bush/McCain stopped that. They didn’t want the American people “..getting upset..” –
Bush Sr. did that, during the first war when the media juxtaposed coffins next to one of his speeches. Granted Bush/McCain took it to a whole new level. I’ve been asking Republicans for years to give me ONE liberal name that runs the news media and no one ever has, yet the they’ll still insist it’s a liberal media. I just think anything intelligent is “liberal” to some people.
Intrigued (17:43:04) :
PJ,
What ’second’ story are you referring to? I don’t see what you mean. (a strong hint will do) Thanks.
________________
On the page where the first link posted takes you, you have to click on every link posted in that post on that blog.
Busgate?
Deryck Harris, the only boy whose name whose name was released involving the bus incident that may or may NOT have involved Track Palin (nd the reason for the school year he spent in Michigan) has put the word out through his myspace page that he is willing to speak to reporters. (I just saw it myself.)
This is the kind of thing that the media has to be careful about though. The more things that are reported that are NOT true, the less creedence there will be for the things that are. And on a personal note, kids screw up. They get pregnant, they commit offenses, etc. — the only reason these things enter into play in this situation is the hypocrisy of what Palin portrays as the perfect working mother. And of course, that McCain has said that her running of her household is one of the things that qualify her to be Vice President of the United States!
One thing that will not change for me, regardles of what is found to be true or not true, is that I feel sorry for the kids. If the McCain/Palin camp hadn’t put them on display and used them as a platform, the scrutiny wouldn’t be as bad as it is.
White Agate, I agree with and appreciate your thoughts on peak oil. I’m disappointed, but not surprised, that we don’t have a serious political discussion about the state of the union. The situation in Georgia and the recent 1500% increase in US financial support is strictly about pipeline protection, not protecting a budding democracy.
Hand in hand with oil dependency is the rapidly declining US financial system. We are a debtor nation, and China just put the screws on the US to guarantee its debts. (Thus the mortgage company bail out this wweekend.) Internationally, countries are selling their US securities – at a significant loss. Wall Street’s crappy bad debt bundles are wiping out pension plans, charities, townships and even fire departments worldwide. The US financial rating is facing a downgrade. The oil pipeline AND the financial/credit pipeline are drying up. The overseas newspapers openly discuss the seriousness of our situation, while very little is heard here about our debtor nation status.
And this weekend while the gov took over Fannie & Freddie, the US auto makers were activating their lobbyists to insist on a govie handout as well.
While I enjoy the lipstick/Barbie/who’s-the-mom posts, I personally believe that the story about Palin is about how she took a small town that was solvent and left it with $22million in debts and a fractured infrastructure. How she was so incompetent as a mayor of a tiny town that she had to be given a town manager to do her job for her. How she is so threatened by people with experience that she routinely fires employees who know how to run a municipal department.
Unfortunatley, telling the truth about the status of the US probably won’t win an election. Too many people seem to want a “there, there, it will be ok” pat on the head and another sip of KoolAid rather than a roadmap to recovery. However, enough people are hurting that a simpler message may reach them – Palin is unable to manage her family, her town and her state, while leaving debt and destruction in her wake.
And as for her new pimp daddy, here’s a little something from youtube on Bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran McCain. To quote Pat Buchanan, McCain will make Cheney look like Gandhi.
Will you people stop focusing on Palin’s boobs? Man… there’s enough boobs running around Palin without me unconsciously looking at hers and wondering if they are real or… well, ya get what I mean.
What’s the difference between a politicial and a prostitute? Lipstick. On. The. Wrong. Palin.
Amused and Bewildered –
AMEN! I agree. Her children were paraded around like props. She thrust that newborn in the air like Michael Jackson did with his kids. She shamelessly put her personal ambition above that of her eldest daughter – FAMILY FIRST MY FOOT. I challenged a neighbor this evening on that. Some of these people honestly forget their stances from week to week: “…oh no,” he replied “…she’s standing right beside that young girl….” Yeah, and that shotgun wedding will be the weekend before the elections. . . just watch. I love my child more than life itself. I do a lot of goofy things as a parent, but never, never, never would I put my child through that.
Amused the one thing that has struck me and that is obvious about Sarah.
She is a control freak and by accepting the nomination, her life and her career are no longer in her control.
As a fellow control freak, I don’t envy her one bit.
McCain/Palin encounter
http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/how-americablog-reader-asked-john-and.html
Karen, thanks for posting that!!! Who is out of touch now?
Lani – I agree with you, and concur that we should be focused on the issues, and how we plan to address them door by door, neighborhood by neighborhood, community by community. this election will be won in the trenches. We have to make sure those who are registered to vote can get to the polls. We have to make sure they have valid registration cards that can’t be tom’fooled by the Republicans and their little games. Thanks for making crystal clear points and getting us back on track.
Count me among those who don’t believe for a minute that the Palins are worth 9 million buckeroos. Although the husband works in the oil industry for good money, and she earned 6 figs for a short while, and they had a large fishing boat, and he won snowmo races, and they were able to afford private school tuition to send Track to hockey school, and they own a house that’s valued at over half a mill, that figure just seems too high.
As for the continued 9/11 “inside job” conspiracy theory, people need to stay as far away from that pile of road apples as possible. First, gw isn’t bright enough to pull of that stunt and, second, too many eye witnesses to that day know better.
btw – did ya’alls know that McCain was a POW? 40 years later, ya’d think he’d have a number of accomplishments to hang his hat on.
“McCain/Palin encounter”
http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/how-americablog-reader-asked-john-and.html
thanks Karen, good for them! we should all ask them questions if we encounter “the straight talk express”
the “Jesus ia a community organizer….. ” t-shirt is on cnn
Lani – no one can make dickless cheney look like anything than the cranky old puss he looks like. cheney, on the other hand, makes karl rove look handsome.
@timc (16:26:34): “Why go on O’rielly? His viewers HATE you, no upside.”
There’s definitely upside. There are repubs and independents who watch BillO and Fox in general (go figure, eh?). Preaching to the choir is fine, but if you want to reach out to folks who don’t think like you do, you’ve got to go where they live. This election is all about the swing states, which means he’s got to reach the folks who would otherwise vote Republican (Reagan Democrats, independents and the like). Feel any better? Probably not, but it’s something to think about, right? :o)
palin-land
http://www.matsugov.us/myproperty/list.aspx?Choice=owner&searchParm=PALIN+TODD
Wow and Wow again!
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/ratings/oreillys_manoamano_is_2nd_highest_program_ever_93722.asp
That American Blog guy was pretty interesting.
I think Sarah and John should do those townhalls he’s been bragging about. They might be John’s thing – but I seriously doubt they are Sarah’s.
A couple of years ago when she was running for governor my husband approached her in the local Blockbuster, he said she wouldn’t answer his questions but was polite nonetheless.
Openness is a campaign slogan for her, but not so much a habit.
Anyone here already seen this?
A friend of mine just sent it to me. It’s been on YouTube since May 2008.
The complete and total failure of the MSM in the whole last 8 horrible Orwellian years is the end of them in the affairs of our nation. The Blogosphere and the PHENOMENON that we all have just experienced here with our dear friend Muck is the shape of things to come. Certainly broadcast news television will now be buried in the ancient sands of Mesopotamia like so many other Empires in this strange tale.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=V5i7macrhsE
I do love the Landlord vs Tenant one! F**king great! (about the 3rd or 4th spot)
I believe it is the last link
It’s posts at a message board which is sickening
If true I am repulsed
There are several very nasty rumors circulating about Track Palin besides the vandalism episode but I haven’t seen a shred of confirmation of them, not even really an attempt at one. At this point, I don’t believe anything that isn’t pretty well nailed down by a reputable media outlet– this stuff is reaching Twilight Zone levels.
I heard Billo say nice stuff about Obama during the New Hampshire campaign. I think he genuinely likes the guy. Billo’s psychology is so far beyond my comprehension that I can’t venture to guess why, except that Obama is actually quite likeable.
I clearly remember the bus vandalism thing. It was a pretty big deal here, thousands of students had to be driven to school because of it, (the disruption to daycares and parent’s work was pretty bad).
From personal experience this seems pretty par for the course for the kids of high profile parents.
AnneinWA–Thank you. That comment, and an hour or two of searching for it once I read it, is what brought me to this place of thought, reason and yes, vigilance.
Is there a clip of Rick using it? Perfect spot for it, right before Rudy. I felt dirty after his speech only to be re-assaulted by Sarah.
Thanks AKM for all that you do. Can’t wait to vote early in NC!
Another humor post – – Sorry about pasting the whole article and not just the link – but I think you need to be a subscriber to access this article.
Op-Ed Columnist
Clash of the Titans
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 6, 2008
ST. PAUL
You know what I’m thinking, because you’re thinking it, too.
If Barack Obama had chosen Hillary Clinton as his running mate, we would now be looking forward to the greatest night in the history of American politics: the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate between Ma Barker and Sarah Barracuda.
Now, alas, we’ll have to wait until 2012 when the two fiercest competitors on the trail will no doubt face off in the presidential debate, with Palin still riding high from her 2008 field-dressing of Obama (who’s now back in the Senate convening his subcommittee on Afghanistan).
The two women are both aggressive pols who take disagreement personally, accruing a body count of rivals, and who have been known to exaggerate their accomplishments. But in ideological terms, the gun-toting hockey mom and the shot-swilling Warrior Queen of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits are opposites.
By 2012, the 76-year-old John McCain will be on his way out. His vice president will wear him down, making him change the name of the White House to Rouge Cou — the name Sarah licensed in 2005 in case she ever got into business — and turn Camp David into a caribou hunting ranch. Then she’ll scare him, informing him that if he tries for a second term, she’ll challenge him in the primary.
“How would you like this pit bull grandma to clean your grandfather clock?” she’ll tell President McCain in her flat “Fargo” accent. He’ll confide in his pal Joe that being a P.O.W. was nothing compared with being trapped in the White House with “that woman.”
It’s delicious imagining the Debate of the Century between Big Mama, as Bill’s male aides called Hillary, and “Hottie Granny,” as People magazine will doubtless dub Sarah. ESPN will want in.
PALIN: Before we start, Hillary, I want to honor your achievement in 2008. You nicked the glass ceiling. But in the end, as my friend Cheryl Metiva from Wasilla Bible Church said, I was more of a woman and more of a man than you, so I was the one who actually busted up the old boys’ club. Sorry I called you a whiner about sexism. That was before I realized how handy the victim card can be against the press wolves. In Alaska, we just gun down wolves from the air.
CLINTON: I do give you and John credit, Sarah, for following my blueprint to reveal Obama as all cage, no bird. But now the Democrats have crawled back to me and I will close the deal. So pack up your snow boots and antlers and backwoods brood and scram.
PALIN: I’ve got a little news flash for you, Hillary. Your night-shift, blue-collar-waitress, boilermaker routine didn’t fool me. It’s in your polls but it’s in my D.N.A. I’ve actually been up at 3 a.m. — gutting moose. While you got to go to your snooty Wellesley, I had to switch colleges six times in six years. While you got to go to Yale Law, I had to enter beauty contests and turn my back to judges in a bathing suit to get scholarship money.
CLINTON: I’ve got a little news flash for you, Annie Oakley. Dinosaurs disappeared a lot longer than 4,000 years ago. I admit you’ve had a profound influence on America, and I’m not just talking about all the women wearing up-dos and rimless titanium $375 Kazuo Kawasaki designer frames. You and John are now at war with four countries — Russia, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, even as Osama bin Laden has opened a storefront in a strip mall in Pakistan to make TV ads.
PALIN: Those wars are tasks from God.
CLINTON: You said you wanted to help women, but you’ve only hurt them with your silly mantra that women can have it all if they just work harder and pray harder. You put Medicare on eBay. You cut funding for special-needs children. The Dobson Supreme Court has outlawed abortion, evolution and gun control. With sex education banned, baby bumps in high schools are rampant. And the head of your Abstinence Outreach Program, Levi Johnston, has failed to force any other teenage fathers to marry their prom dates.
PALIN: Life is always welcome. Unless it’s on four legs.
CLINTON: When it comes to Big Oil, you make Dick Cheney look small bore. You had secret energy meetings to eliminate polar bears. You’ve turned Alaska into Kuwait without the sand. Gas is $50 a gallon and global warming has changed the Rose Garden into the Palm Court. Your only energy plan is to give tax credits to people who put do-it-yourself oil rigs in their backyards. You created a Department of Drilling and More Drilling and put double-dipping Todd in charge.
PALIN: You’re chiding me about nepotism? At least I know how to control my First Dude. If you think that fake sniper fire in Bosnia was bad, wait till you get a load of my hunting rifle.
CLINTON: Adios, Sister Sarah. You’re tough, but I’ve been tougher longer. Slide out of town on that oil slick you made on the Mall. And take that Grizzly throw with you.
More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on September 7, 2008, on page WK11 of the New York edition.
http://progressivealaska.blogspot.com/2008/09/paradise-lost-chapter-thirty-three-what.html
What I Saw:
Yes, I knew someone who went to the same prep school as George W. Bush when his parents were first in DC. The legends of his and the other Bush kids’ bad behavior there persisted for decades…
PJ…
Sick… twisted … bizarre… unbelievable second story!
It would seem to help explain the out-of-state trip for a specified period of time. My daughter LIVES in Portage! Any requests for onsite queries?
Proud2BUSA , thank you for your response to me, and for all of your insightful comments this past week (geez, has it only been a week/10 days??). I can only hope that there are more considered voters such as yourself out there than the GOP machine would have us believe. When I hear about working class women voters going for McCain in droves, it gives me the willies. Do they have any understanding of Palin’s anti-choice agenda and utter lack of experience for the job, and how McCain will drive the economy further into the ground?? Oy. Feminism is surely set back massively if tokenism wins the day.
MartaK–Yup, Cindy’s grasping like everyone else even with all that money.
On a more compassionate note, I really thought that MCain, when asked to define rich, was thinking of Cindy when he answered “Some of the richest people I know are the unhappiest” instaed of answering the question.
Will it be a repeat of the 2000 Election?
http://www.truthout.org/article/nearly-600000-voters-subject-possible-caging-ohio
Just saw the ProgressiveAlaska post… it all seems not only plausable, but possible. The courts have been doing the ‘choice’ thing for a LONG time (it was still popular when I volunteered to join the Air Force back in ’70)… It’s almost as good as a draft! Unfortunately, proper training not withstanding, I am not all that sure I would want that young man next to me in a bombed out building versus one who CHOSE to be there.
I just reads several posts (above), where folks are generally in agreement that it is hard to believe that the Palins have $9 million.
I agree. It is hard to believe — considering the modest income we know about for that family.
But why doesn’t someone try and debunk this rumor?
It may have legs. Maybe not. We’ll never know until someone does some digging and investigative reporting.
Any ideas on who can be approached to look into this rumor?
MartaK
“Jesus was a Community Organizer, and Pontias Pilate was a Governor.”
I would only add this:…so wash your hands, Sarah Palin, and that dirty mouth of yours.
Hard to prove a negative Hawk.
Tonya…
A few days ago one of our stalwart fellow posters here reminded us of a very important process that ties in with your link’s article…
CHECK YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION INFORMATION!
I moved WITHIN my apartment complex LAST YEAR and never bothered to VERIFY that with the election commission! So I pull out my voter registration card and it still lists my old address! AND I LIVE IN FLORIDA! I have no idea if my vote even was COUNTED last time around! You think I would KNOW better! And therein lies my point…
DO IT NOW! Make SURE your vote COUNTS!
Update your voter registration THIS WEEK no matter WHERE you live!
From England
From England Good God! I hope he doesn’t think she will keep it close to her heart. Most of us are old enough to remember this guy, and the settlement made to get him back in the “good graces” of the US. So the question is how can we convince the world that we are ready to get back into it’s “good graces”?
Answer: vote Obama/Biden!
PJ
“Second story” is now redacted. Do tell!!
Sauerkrout
Huh? Wrong Palin?
Finally found the Track Palin stuff. (Not as good at this as all of you, I guess I’m too old!)
I further guess that the Palin’s are pinning all their hopes on the middle two girls since they seem to have royally screwed up on the first two and Trig (bless him, whomsoever he was born of) is likely out of the equation.
Not sure I want Trig in the Middle East, though..read “The Kite Runner” and” A Thousand Splendid Suns”.
Cassie: 272 comments on a whole new thread, that’s how slow I am.
“All I Saw” wrote “Hard to prove a negative Hawk.”
That statement simply makes no sense.
We should insist on the production of the tax returns of the Palins going far enough back to confirm or debunk the rumor that they have a new worth of $9 million.
This troubling rumor is simple for the Palins to confirm or debunk.
Producing tax returns is part of the vetting process!
i almost forgot! (got entangled with the troll)
the main reason i came back here tonight was to let you all know about this story that i came across:
“An AMERICAblog reader was having lunch in Albuquerque, New Mexico today, when who should drop in for a substance-less photo opp? John McCain and Sarah Palin. And you’ll be surprised to know that when both of them were asked polite but substantive questions by our reader, they refused to answer. He’s such a maverick, that John McCain. And she has so much substance, it’s scary, that Sarah Palin. Here’s our reader’s first hand report from the afternoon that they made Sarah Palin confront a real question from a real human being:”
go to the link for the rest of the story:
http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/how-americablog-reader-asked-john-and.html
[…] Source Article […]
Matthew, lies about Obama have been going on for at least a year and a half. Visit freerepublic.com or worldnetdaily. Google Obama’s full name. There’s nothing you can do except do a lot of explaining. There is a lot of ignorance out there. The best thing to do is to canvas and register voters. Take positive action. Forget about the crap. It will drive you crazy.
Also, Ms. Mooseburger’s moose needs to be sliced and bloody.
So, McCain promises to have more than a “token” Dem in his cabinet. Hmmm, wonder who it’ll be besides Lieberman. Oh, yeah, that’s right, Lieberman’s just a token Dem, so he doesn’t count.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/07/mccain.dems/index.html
And now they’re trying to tamp down the outrage at Palin’s community organizer comment. Their explanation doesn’t wash. She could have drawn the comparison without being snide.
And then there’s this one.
LONG CAREER???? Who’s he trying to kid? Let’s see, 2 years on the council (or maybe it was 4), 6 as mayor, and 20 months as governor. Amazing!
What was the second story about Track ?!?!?!? PLEASE post it here !!! Thank you !!!
The story about Track is too vile to repeat if it’s not true. I don’t want to get into another “Baby Trig” story that just muddies the message.
Cassie, I just checked—that post referring to you know what is still there. Just have to read all the messages.
Sarah Palin dolls go on sale as John McCain’s running mate’s popularity soars
http://tinyurl.com/6qlqrn
Would anyone like to try to grammatically parse that statement of Cindy McCain?
You might like my blog on Wasillans for Obama.
I’m just glad Palin (the Republican vice presidential pick) has just as much foreign policy experience as the Democratic presidential pick.
skepticsglobalwarming,
How have you determined what constitutes “foreign policy experience”?
You Dems are just slandering wimps.
You can’t win wars and you can’t beat me.
I’m going to be president. Yiiiiiiiiiiiha!
What do you have to say about the debunked accusation that Sarah Palin tried to ban library books in Wasilla?
A Fan,
I’d say that it’s significant that a purported list of banned books has been debunked, because that marks a point of truth regarding this question. However, the “accusation that Sarah Palin tried to ban library books” has not been debunked. It was a list that was debunked, not the intended act. It is not about “Which books?”, it is about the intent and act. Are you suggesting that some books should be banned? Can you share an example, a title of a book that should be banned in the United States?
Fortunately, for the world, there are millions of brilliant and intelligent people in America. Unfortunately, neither Sarah Palin or John McCain appear to be one of them.
These are very dangerous times both economically and militarily. Whoever is elected better know what the hell they’re doing.
http://www.blogoffanddie.wordpress.com
I don’t care who wins anymore, just as long as they all have nice hair and flag lapel pins.
Hey, Hey, Hey! Be careful about how poking fun at our beloved Barbie doll. Didn’t you know that Barbie can “be anything she wants to be”? Such as a sarcstic, redneck Governor VP-wanna-be appealing to some very small minds in this country (i.e. McCain).
The polls show: America wants me!
Yiiiiiiha!
Thank you for your support.
Visit my campaign.
Anyone just see Larry King? Arriana Huffington was on, and Chuck Norris was visibly upset. Would hardly let her finish a sentence.
Check out the Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator. It’s where she got those stupid names for her kids! http://www.personal-space.com/palin.
OMG. Are the Republicans for real?
For lots more Sarah Palin humor, check out Women Against Sarah Palin.
[…] Barbie courtesy of Mudflats and College […]
[…] Source Article […]