Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Katheleen Parker - National Review A Conservative's POV
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MDZiMDhjYTU1NmI5Y2MwZjg2MWNiMWMyYTUxZDkwNTE=
">http://article.nationalrevi...Palin Problem She’s out of her league. By Kathleen Parker
If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin. To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman.
Or, as I am guilty of charging her early critics, supporting only a certain kind of woman. Some of the passionately feminist critics of Palin who attacked her personally deserved some of the backlash they received. But circumstances have changed since Palin was introduced as just a hockey mom with lipstick — what a difference a financial crisis makes — and a more complicated picture has emerged. As we’ve seen and heard more from John McCain’s running mate, it is increasingly clear that Palin is a problem. Quick study or not, she doesn’t know enough about economics and foreign policy to make Americans comfortable with a President Palin should conditions warrant her promotion. Yes, she recently met and turned several heads of state as the United Nations General Assembly convened in New York. She was gracious, charming and disarming. Men swooned. Pakistan’s president wanted to hug her. (Perhaps Osama bin Laden is dying to meet her?) And, yes, she has common sense, something we value. And she’s had executive experience as a mayor and a governor, though of relatively small constituencies (about 6,000 and 680,000, respectively). Finally, Palin’s narrative is fun, inspiring and all-American in that frontier way we seem to admire. When Palin first emerged as John McCain’s running mate, I confess I was delighted. She was the antithesis and nemesis of the hirsute, Birkenstock-wearing sisterhood — a refreshing feminist of a different order who personified the modern successful working mother. Palin didn’t make a mess cracking the glass ceiling. She simply glided through it. It was fun while it lasted. Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League. No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. Palin filibusters. She repeats words, filling space with deadwood. Cut the verbiage and there’s not much content there. Here’s but one example of many from her interview with Hannity: “Well, there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into the issue that we’re talking about today. And that’s something that John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to deal with an issue like this.” When Couric pointed to polls showing that the financial crisis had boosted Obama’s numbers, Palin blustered wordily: “I’m not looking at poll numbers. What I think Americans at the end of the day are going to be able to go back and look at track records and see who’s more apt to be talking about solutions and wishing for and hoping for solutions for some opportunity to change, and who’s actually done it?” If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself. If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true. What to do? McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden. Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first. Do it for your country.
My take: The wheels are coming off the 'Straight Talk Express". It has now become Gobbledygook LandRover. Her performances are flabbergasting. For the sake of the country, I hope that McCain continues to embrace Palin. He shouldn't get off so easy. . I think if he was able to jettison Palin, he could put in Tom Ridge or someone much more palatable to Independents and it would shake up the campaign all OVER again. He picked her, he can now reap the "rewards"
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Obama, not McCain Shows Steady Hand in Crisis
From Bloomberg this morning:
Obama, Not McCain, Shows Steady Hand in Crisis: Albert R. Hunt
Commentary by Albert R. Hunt
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- For the first time since 1932 a presidential election is taking place in the midst of a genuine financial crisis. The reaction of the candidates was revealing.
John McCain, railing against the ``greed and corruption'' of Wall Street, won the first round of the sound-bite war. He came out with a television commercial on the ``crisis'' early on Monday of last week, and over the next three days gave more than a dozen broadcast interviews. He and running mate Sarah Palin would reform Wall Street and regulate the nefarious fat cats that caused this fiasco.
It was a great start. It then went downhill as he stumbled over his record of championing deregulation, claimed the economy was fundamentally strong, and flip-flopped over the government takeover of American International Group Inc.
For his part, Barack Obama didn't come across as passionately outraged and wasn't as omnipresent or as specific.
More revealing, though, was to whom both candidates turned on that panic-ridden morning of Sept. 15, and how the messages evolved before and after that day.
McCain called Martin Feldstein, the well-known Republican economist and Reagan administration adviser, John Taylor of Stanford University, who served in President George W. Bush's Treasury and Carly Fiorina, once the chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co.
Obama called former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.
It was a mismatch.
Towering Volcker
Feldstein, for all his intellect, was ineffective in the Reagan administration; then-White House deputy chief of staffDick Darman cut him out of important action. Volcker, first at the Treasury and then as chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a towering figure in every way.
Taylor is a well-regarded academic. In four years as undersecretary of the Treasury, he left few footprints. Summers, as both deputy secretary and secretary, left a lot.
Fiorina is smart and quick; to put it charitably, Rubin will forget more about financial markets than she'll ever know.
When it comes to governance, and either Democrat Obama or Republican McCain will inherit this miserable financial mess, the best guide is who they talked to, what they said, where they've been, and how knowledgeable they are.
Obama's record and earlier speeches belie some of his more populist rhetoric. Yet they also suggest, as do his advisers, a much more activist government role than is likely under a McCain-Palin administration.
Comfortable With Subject
Obama called for the overhaul of the financial-regulatory system and tougher enforcement well before this past week's traumas.
Detached observers who watched him last week, especially in a Bloomberg Television interview, were taken by how conversant and comfortable he was on the subject, despite his thin record. Few detached observers came away with that impression watching the Arizona senator.
Much of the re-regulatory fever focuses on the Federal Reserve and any new agencies created to clean up the fiasco. Central, however, will be a more vigorous Securities and Exchange Commission, or whatever holds that investor-protection function.
McCain displayed a sudden interest in the SEC last week when he demanded that Chairman Chris Cox be fired. When his campaign was asked if the senator had ever criticized the current commission's performance before, they failed to respond.
All For Obama
Tellingly, three former SEC chairmen, a Democrat, Arthur Levitt, and two Republicans, David Ruder and Bill Donaldson, have endorsed Obama. Levitt is a board member of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
Donaldson, who was tapped by Bush to head the SEC, says Obama called him last year about the financial-regulatory problems. He has never heard from McCain.
``Obama has been talking about the need for better financial regulation well before this crisis hit and has done some real thinking about it,'' says Donaldson, a lifelong Republican. ``McCain comes across as someone who suddenly realized changes have to be made.''
There is a case for McCain: it's if you believe in less regulation, that the government should get out of the way and let the markets work their will.
No `Real Understanding'
``I don't think anyone who wants to increase the burden of government regulation and high taxes has any real understanding of economics,'' McCain said this spring at an Inez, Kentucky, town hall meeting, where he also declared ``the fundamentals of our economy are good.''
Until recently, he repeatedly invoked Ronald Reagan's calls for less regulation. He voted for the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley corporate-governance regulations -- then last year said he regretted that vote.
McCain isn't averse to some regulations. He has strongly championed a greater federal role in campaign finance, tobacco and boxing. In each case, he saw a clear villain -- special- interest money, a tobacco product that puts profits ahead of lives, and unscrupulous boxing promoters.
There has been little evidence that prior to last week he ever put financial firms in this category. Although he assailed excessive corporate compensation last week, McCain has opposed a tepid House-passed bill that would give corporate shareholders the right to cast a non-binding vote on compensation of top executives.
Turning to Gramm
The person he has turned to most for counsel on such matters is his ex-Senate colleague Phil Gramm. Gramm is a political Gordon Gekko, a brainy economist with a Darwinian view of markets and public policy.
It's not easy to remember what the financial world looked like 10 days ago much less 10 months ago. Decisions that will be reached after this election will be the most important since the 1930s.
Obama, as more than a few Democrats are complaining, hasn't been as quick, sharp -- or demagogic -- as they would like. McCain has been beset by deeper difficulties: an inchoate and inconsistent message that seems to reflect political exigencies more than principled convictions.
On the financial crisis, last week belonged to Obama.
(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Albert R. Hunt in Washington at ahunt1@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: September 21, 2008 09:33 EDT
Obama, Not McCain, Shows Steady Hand in Crisis: Albert R. Hunt
Commentary by Albert R. Hunt
Sept. 22 (Bloomberg) -- For the first time since 1932 a presidential election is taking place in the midst of a genuine financial crisis. The reaction of the candidates was revealing.
John McCain, railing against the ``greed and corruption'' of Wall Street, won the first round of the sound-bite war. He came out with a television commercial on the ``crisis'' early on Monday of last week, and over the next three days gave more than a dozen broadcast interviews. He and running mate Sarah Palin would reform Wall Street and regulate the nefarious fat cats that caused this fiasco.
It was a great start. It then went downhill as he stumbled over his record of championing deregulation, claimed the economy was fundamentally strong, and flip-flopped over the government takeover of American International Group Inc.
For his part, Barack Obama didn't come across as passionately outraged and wasn't as omnipresent or as specific.
More revealing, though, was to whom both candidates turned on that panic-ridden morning of Sept. 15, and how the messages evolved before and after that day.
McCain called Martin Feldstein, the well-known Republican economist and Reagan administration adviser, John Taylor of Stanford University, who served in President George W. Bush's Treasury and Carly Fiorina, once the chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co.
Obama called former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, and former Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.
It was a mismatch.
Towering Volcker
Feldstein, for all his intellect, was ineffective in the Reagan administration; then-White House deputy chief of staffDick Darman cut him out of important action. Volcker, first at the Treasury and then as chairman of the Federal Reserve, was a towering figure in every way.
Taylor is a well-regarded academic. In four years as undersecretary of the Treasury, he left few footprints. Summers, as both deputy secretary and secretary, left a lot.
Fiorina is smart and quick; to put it charitably, Rubin will forget more about financial markets than she'll ever know.
When it comes to governance, and either Democrat Obama or Republican McCain will inherit this miserable financial mess, the best guide is who they talked to, what they said, where they've been, and how knowledgeable they are.
Obama's record and earlier speeches belie some of his more populist rhetoric. Yet they also suggest, as do his advisers, a much more activist government role than is likely under a McCain-Palin administration.
Comfortable With Subject
Obama called for the overhaul of the financial-regulatory system and tougher enforcement well before this past week's traumas.
Detached observers who watched him last week, especially in a Bloomberg Television interview, were taken by how conversant and comfortable he was on the subject, despite his thin record. Few detached observers came away with that impression watching the Arizona senator.
Much of the re-regulatory fever focuses on the Federal Reserve and any new agencies created to clean up the fiasco. Central, however, will be a more vigorous Securities and Exchange Commission, or whatever holds that investor-protection function.
McCain displayed a sudden interest in the SEC last week when he demanded that Chairman Chris Cox be fired. When his campaign was asked if the senator had ever criticized the current commission's performance before, they failed to respond.
All For Obama
Tellingly, three former SEC chairmen, a Democrat, Arthur Levitt, and two Republicans, David Ruder and Bill Donaldson, have endorsed Obama. Levitt is a board member of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.
Donaldson, who was tapped by Bush to head the SEC, says Obama called him last year about the financial-regulatory problems. He has never heard from McCain.
``Obama has been talking about the need for better financial regulation well before this crisis hit and has done some real thinking about it,'' says Donaldson, a lifelong Republican. ``McCain comes across as someone who suddenly realized changes have to be made.''
There is a case for McCain: it's if you believe in less regulation, that the government should get out of the way and let the markets work their will.
No `Real Understanding'
``I don't think anyone who wants to increase the burden of government regulation and high taxes has any real understanding of economics,'' McCain said this spring at an Inez, Kentucky, town hall meeting, where he also declared ``the fundamentals of our economy are good.''
Until recently, he repeatedly invoked Ronald Reagan's calls for less regulation. He voted for the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley corporate-governance regulations -- then last year said he regretted that vote.
McCain isn't averse to some regulations. He has strongly championed a greater federal role in campaign finance, tobacco and boxing. In each case, he saw a clear villain -- special- interest money, a tobacco product that puts profits ahead of lives, and unscrupulous boxing promoters.
There has been little evidence that prior to last week he ever put financial firms in this category. Although he assailed excessive corporate compensation last week, McCain has opposed a tepid House-passed bill that would give corporate shareholders the right to cast a non-binding vote on compensation of top executives.
Turning to Gramm
The person he has turned to most for counsel on such matters is his ex-Senate colleague Phil Gramm. Gramm is a political Gordon Gekko, a brainy economist with a Darwinian view of markets and public policy.
It's not easy to remember what the financial world looked like 10 days ago much less 10 months ago. Decisions that will be reached after this election will be the most important since the 1930s.
Obama, as more than a few Democrats are complaining, hasn't been as quick, sharp -- or demagogic -- as they would like. McCain has been beset by deeper difficulties: an inchoate and inconsistent message that seems to reflect political exigencies more than principled convictions.
On the financial crisis, last week belonged to Obama.
(Albert R. Hunt is the executive editor for Washington at Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this column: Albert R. Hunt in Washington at ahunt1@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: September 21, 2008 09:33 EDT
NY Times Op-Ed: Barack Obama, John McCain and the Language of Race
Sunday, September 21, 2008
White women, no way / Once pro-Obama, but now swoon for McPalin? Who the hell are you?
From Mark Morford, column at SFGate on Friday 9/19:
Every white woman I know is positively horrified.
Mark Morford
* White women, no way Once pro-Obama, but now swoon for McPalin? Who the... 09.19.08
* David Foster Wallace All literary flags at half-mast, rightfully so. In... 09.17.08
* Are you an elitist? 18 revealing ways to know for sure 09.12.08
* Evil: It's the new good! Shut up and drink your high fructose corn syrup... 09.10.08
More Mark Morford »
Wait, that's not exactly true. It's more accurate to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy, comatose McCain campaign -- that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic, but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere.
Truly, among women in the know and especially among those who fought so hard to bring Hillary Clinton to the brink of history, nausea and a general recoiling appear to be the universal reactions to Palin's sudden presence on the national stage, stemming straight from the idea that there's even a slight chance in hell such an antagonistic, anti-female politico could be within a 72-year-old heartbeat of becoming the most powerful and iconic woman of all time.
They say: You've got to be kidding me. They say: This is what we get? This could be our historic role model? Two hundred years (OK, more like 2000) of struggle, only to have this nasty caricature of femininity try to hijack and mock and undermine it all?
It cannot be true, they say. The universe must joking, would not dare dump such a homophobic, Creationist evangelical nutball on us, this anti-choice, God-pandering woman who's the inverse of Hillary, this woman of deep inexperience who abhors birth control and supports abstinence education and shoots exhausted wolves from helicopters and hates polar bears and actually stands for everything progressive women have resented since the first pope Swift-Boated Eve.
But now, the truly bizarre part. Despite this defiant outcry, a great many pundits and reports have suggested that, just after the Palin VP announcement, a sizable chunk of predominantly white women nevertheless abandoned their tentative support for Obama and leapt into the lyin' arms of McCain, presumably simply because of Palin's gender and PTA momhood.
And thus did the harrowing wail go out: WTF? Could it be true? Are cadres of formerly Obama-leaning white women really so enchanted by Palin's gender and motherhood status that they openly ignore the fact that she basically wants to shove women's rights back about five decades? Can it be so simple, crude, sad?
Let us analyze. Let me, being a straight white male and therefore only capable of gazing in awe at the spectacle that is the indecipherable female intuitive response, foolishly attempt to decipher some of it anyway, and explain why in hell some women might jump to Palin, despite the fact that she essentially hates them. Shall we begin?
"She's one of us." This was the resounding quote from many deer-in-the-Palin-headlights fans, a bizarre, dangerous sentiment that echoes the blue-collar Midwest's blind love of George W. Bush, simply because he came across as the kind of simple-minded aw-shucks guy you'd want to have a beer with, never you mind that giant silver spoon sticking out of his mouth or that giant daddy's-boy chip on his droopy shoulders.
Is this all it is? Does "one of us" merely mean white women really believe Palin could, if McCain didn't survive his first term, effectively lead the most powerful, flawed, complicated nation on the planet merely because she's a hard-workin' mom with moxie, that she's managed to raise a gaggle of strangely named kids who hunt and don't believe in evolution and get pregnant before they're old enough to buy a pack of Marlboros?
Or does it mean they agree with Palin about not giving a damn for equal pay, or honest sex education, or separation of church and state, or alternative energy, or a woman's right to choose, or their own daughters' rights if they get knocked up after being raped or incested? Nah, that can't be it.
Maybe we're just not used to seeing the female voting demographic depicted this way. Truly, it's usually men who are the knuckleheaded ones, who will flip their vote merely over a single inconsequential issue ("I like everything about Obama except he supports gun control, and I love my guns, so I guess I gotta go for McCain"). Women, according to the eternal mythology, are no such dupes, and choose more wisely, from deeper intuition, instinct. Right?
Wrong. Maybe this is our simple summary, the blaring headline we should be reading in the wake of recent events. "Easily duped Palin supporters prove: Some white women are just as dumb as men." Is that all it is? Maybe so.
Ah, but there is good news. It appears the bloom is already off the McPalin rose, the baby bump she gave McCain is already gone, as everyone from here to Wasilla is sick to death of hearing about her. Every day that goes by it comes clearer that the Sarah juggernaut is no juggernaut at all but merely an increasingly disturbing PR stunt, and a bit of a disgrace for John McCain himself, whose once-noble aura of integrity and class has essentially vanished.
A potent backlash is coming fast. Actually, it began almost immediately, just after the Republican National Convention, when the GOP cheerfully announced they'd raised a whopping one million bucks in the 24 hours following Palin's speech, so inspired was the heavily drugged conservative base by her teleprompter-reading skills (she didn't write a single word of her own speech, of course; it came from a former Bushite, well before she was the VP pick).
Well, gosh. Really? A million? Wow.
But then Obama's campaign issued a statement of their own. Turns out they'd raised a bit money in the exact same time frame, a rather impressive outpouring of cash from all those on the left who could be heard screaming "oh my God no way in hell" to their TV screens as Palin's finger jabbed at the heart of all that's right and good with the world. The amount Obama raised in the same 24 hours? $10 million. Well now.
How much of that staggering amount came from the newly galvanized, infuriated female populace from the left who see right through Palin's shrill charade and damn well recognize an imposter in their midst, it's impossible to tell. But I think it's a damn safe bet to assume, they are legion.
And let me tell you, they are pissed.
Every white woman I know is positively horrified.
Mark Morford
* White women, no way Once pro-Obama, but now swoon for McPalin? Who the... 09.19.08
* David Foster Wallace All literary flags at half-mast, rightfully so. In... 09.17.08
* Are you an elitist? 18 revealing ways to know for sure 09.12.08
* Evil: It's the new good! Shut up and drink your high fructose corn syrup... 09.10.08
More Mark Morford »
Wait, that's not exactly true. It's more accurate to say that every thoughtful or liberal or intuitive or open-minded white woman I know worth her vagina monologue and her self-determination and two centuries of nonstop striving for equal rights and sexual freedom and exhaustive patriarchal unshackling is right now openly horrified, appalled at what the addition of shrill PTA hockey-mom Sarah Palin seems to have done for the soggy, comatose McCain campaign -- that is, make it not merely remotely interesting and melodramatic, but aggressively hostile to, well, to all intelligent women everywhere.
Truly, among women in the know and especially among those who fought so hard to bring Hillary Clinton to the brink of history, nausea and a general recoiling appear to be the universal reactions to Palin's sudden presence on the national stage, stemming straight from the idea that there's even a slight chance in hell such an antagonistic, anti-female politico could be within a 72-year-old heartbeat of becoming the most powerful and iconic woman of all time.
They say: You've got to be kidding me. They say: This is what we get? This could be our historic role model? Two hundred years (OK, more like 2000) of struggle, only to have this nasty caricature of femininity try to hijack and mock and undermine it all?
It cannot be true, they say. The universe must joking, would not dare dump such a homophobic, Creationist evangelical nutball on us, this anti-choice, God-pandering woman who's the inverse of Hillary, this woman of deep inexperience who abhors birth control and supports abstinence education and shoots exhausted wolves from helicopters and hates polar bears and actually stands for everything progressive women have resented since the first pope Swift-Boated Eve.
But now, the truly bizarre part. Despite this defiant outcry, a great many pundits and reports have suggested that, just after the Palin VP announcement, a sizable chunk of predominantly white women nevertheless abandoned their tentative support for Obama and leapt into the lyin' arms of McCain, presumably simply because of Palin's gender and PTA momhood.
And thus did the harrowing wail go out: WTF? Could it be true? Are cadres of formerly Obama-leaning white women really so enchanted by Palin's gender and motherhood status that they openly ignore the fact that she basically wants to shove women's rights back about five decades? Can it be so simple, crude, sad?
Let us analyze. Let me, being a straight white male and therefore only capable of gazing in awe at the spectacle that is the indecipherable female intuitive response, foolishly attempt to decipher some of it anyway, and explain why in hell some women might jump to Palin, despite the fact that she essentially hates them. Shall we begin?
"She's one of us." This was the resounding quote from many deer-in-the-Palin-headlights fans, a bizarre, dangerous sentiment that echoes the blue-collar Midwest's blind love of George W. Bush, simply because he came across as the kind of simple-minded aw-shucks guy you'd want to have a beer with, never you mind that giant silver spoon sticking out of his mouth or that giant daddy's-boy chip on his droopy shoulders.
Is this all it is? Does "one of us" merely mean white women really believe Palin could, if McCain didn't survive his first term, effectively lead the most powerful, flawed, complicated nation on the planet merely because she's a hard-workin' mom with moxie, that she's managed to raise a gaggle of strangely named kids who hunt and don't believe in evolution and get pregnant before they're old enough to buy a pack of Marlboros?
Or does it mean they agree with Palin about not giving a damn for equal pay, or honest sex education, or separation of church and state, or alternative energy, or a woman's right to choose, or their own daughters' rights if they get knocked up after being raped or incested? Nah, that can't be it.
Maybe we're just not used to seeing the female voting demographic depicted this way. Truly, it's usually men who are the knuckleheaded ones, who will flip their vote merely over a single inconsequential issue ("I like everything about Obama except he supports gun control, and I love my guns, so I guess I gotta go for McCain"). Women, according to the eternal mythology, are no such dupes, and choose more wisely, from deeper intuition, instinct. Right?
Wrong. Maybe this is our simple summary, the blaring headline we should be reading in the wake of recent events. "Easily duped Palin supporters prove: Some white women are just as dumb as men." Is that all it is? Maybe so.
Ah, but there is good news. It appears the bloom is already off the McPalin rose, the baby bump she gave McCain is already gone, as everyone from here to Wasilla is sick to death of hearing about her. Every day that goes by it comes clearer that the Sarah juggernaut is no juggernaut at all but merely an increasingly disturbing PR stunt, and a bit of a disgrace for John McCain himself, whose once-noble aura of integrity and class has essentially vanished.
A potent backlash is coming fast. Actually, it began almost immediately, just after the Republican National Convention, when the GOP cheerfully announced they'd raised a whopping one million bucks in the 24 hours following Palin's speech, so inspired was the heavily drugged conservative base by her teleprompter-reading skills (she didn't write a single word of her own speech, of course; it came from a former Bushite, well before she was the VP pick).
Well, gosh. Really? A million? Wow.
But then Obama's campaign issued a statement of their own. Turns out they'd raised a bit money in the exact same time frame, a rather impressive outpouring of cash from all those on the left who could be heard screaming "oh my God no way in hell" to their TV screens as Palin's finger jabbed at the heart of all that's right and good with the world. The amount Obama raised in the same 24 hours? $10 million. Well now.
How much of that staggering amount came from the newly galvanized, infuriated female populace from the left who see right through Palin's shrill charade and damn well recognize an imposter in their midst, it's impossible to tell. But I think it's a damn safe bet to assume, they are legion.
And let me tell you, they are pissed.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A Little Clarification Needed...
Found this on Crooks and Liars.com
I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....
* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.
* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and you're a maverick.
* Graduate from Harvard law School and be President of the Law Review, and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
* If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years i n the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex edu cation, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DUI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, much clearer now.
I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight.....
* If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic, different."
* Grow up in Alaska eating moose burgers, a quintessential American story.
* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.
* Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, and you're a maverick.
* Graduate from Harvard law School and be President of the Law Review, and you are unstable.
* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.
* If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years i n the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.
* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.
* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.
* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.
* If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex edu cation, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.
* If , while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant , you're very responsible.
* If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.
* If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude", with at least one DUI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote until age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
OK, much clearer now.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
The Real America
Democrats are stymied with the results of polling lately. Bush's approval ratings are so low....how could the country be leaning Republican AGAIN? Who are these people??
Some of these folks are those who are willing to admit to themselves that yes, McCain might have lied here and there, that Sarah Palin may have stretched the truth a little bit, but that is okay. Some follow blindly and progressives think they have awakened in some alternate Universe...."how could they vote against their own self interests? How can they follow a man like McCain who wants to continue the Iraq war? After all, wasn't Obama's popularity due in large part to the fact that he was against the Iraq war from the beginning? Isn't this one of the main slams against Hillary, that she voted for it? Aren't the American people interested in ending the war in Iraq?" Judging from Obama's ads of late, one wouldn't think so. He is not campaigning on the war theme at all anymore. So how CAN the American public be so gullible as to fall for another war-monger we say to ourselves.
Living on the coasts as most of my friends do, and those progressive folks in New York City sometimes forget that America in large part is The Waltons. America is Dollywood. America is Deliverance. America is Beavis and Butthead. America is Pimp my Ride. America is Survivor. America is County Fair. The majority of these Americans are not at all adverse to wars.
I think Democrats made a miscalculation when they attributed the disapproval ratings for Bush as a sign that the 67% were therefore going to all vote Democratic this time around to end the war. Perhaps the disapproval of Bush was that he had not had a decisive victory in Iraq, like Desert Storm. Perhaps they were angry that he had not managed to capture Bin Laden and given them SATISFACTION and prestige; they haven't yet been able to high five each other and woo hoo it up.
These are the Americans who have no problem supporting a crusty old war monger POW who says things like "I see victory in Iraq. I know how to leave, by winning it!" or "There will be wars ahead, many wars." or "I will follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell!" They have no problem with Palin saying "Perhaps so" we will have to go to war with Russia." These Americans have no problem with war.
Sure, some of their kids will have to go to these wars and die, but think about it, the spin is that when they die it is for a "noble cause" and they become automatic heroes. Not to be cynical here but a war hero might be better for some of these families than a lackluster ne'er do well son or daughter that would have otherwise been an embarrassment. Now they can be heroes. Like Sarah Palin's son; he is being touted as a Patriot and hero for signing up but it is not mentioned that the judge ordered him to sign up to the military or go to prison for vandalizing school buses. I cannot believe he is the only one in that circumstance. For the parents of these kids it is 'whew! thank god there is the military option." Even with the possibility of death looming out there, the military option is still seen as superior to having your kid be a punk or criminal bringing shame and blame on the family.
The majority of Nascar families, small town families (who overwhelmingly vote Republican) will not see their children go to wars. They will sit back and watch the (sanitized) war news on TV and pass the popcorn.
I am one of those who believe that Americans are never gonna get it about war, unless and until it is fought on their doorsteps, their loved ones are killed right in front of them and their towns and cities destroyed. Then at long last, Americans may well lose their taste for war.
Some of these folks are those who are willing to admit to themselves that yes, McCain might have lied here and there, that Sarah Palin may have stretched the truth a little bit, but that is okay. Some follow blindly and progressives think they have awakened in some alternate Universe...."how could they vote against their own self interests? How can they follow a man like McCain who wants to continue the Iraq war? After all, wasn't Obama's popularity due in large part to the fact that he was against the Iraq war from the beginning? Isn't this one of the main slams against Hillary, that she voted for it? Aren't the American people interested in ending the war in Iraq?" Judging from Obama's ads of late, one wouldn't think so. He is not campaigning on the war theme at all anymore. So how CAN the American public be so gullible as to fall for another war-monger we say to ourselves.
Living on the coasts as most of my friends do, and those progressive folks in New York City sometimes forget that America in large part is The Waltons. America is Dollywood. America is Deliverance. America is Beavis and Butthead. America is Pimp my Ride. America is Survivor. America is County Fair. The majority of these Americans are not at all adverse to wars.
I think Democrats made a miscalculation when they attributed the disapproval ratings for Bush as a sign that the 67% were therefore going to all vote Democratic this time around to end the war. Perhaps the disapproval of Bush was that he had not had a decisive victory in Iraq, like Desert Storm. Perhaps they were angry that he had not managed to capture Bin Laden and given them SATISFACTION and prestige; they haven't yet been able to high five each other and woo hoo it up.
These are the Americans who have no problem supporting a crusty old war monger POW who says things like "I see victory in Iraq. I know how to leave, by winning it!" or "There will be wars ahead, many wars." or "I will follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell!" They have no problem with Palin saying "Perhaps so" we will have to go to war with Russia." These Americans have no problem with war.
Sure, some of their kids will have to go to these wars and die, but think about it, the spin is that when they die it is for a "noble cause" and they become automatic heroes. Not to be cynical here but a war hero might be better for some of these families than a lackluster ne'er do well son or daughter that would have otherwise been an embarrassment. Now they can be heroes. Like Sarah Palin's son; he is being touted as a Patriot and hero for signing up but it is not mentioned that the judge ordered him to sign up to the military or go to prison for vandalizing school buses. I cannot believe he is the only one in that circumstance. For the parents of these kids it is 'whew! thank god there is the military option." Even with the possibility of death looming out there, the military option is still seen as superior to having your kid be a punk or criminal bringing shame and blame on the family.
The majority of Nascar families, small town families (who overwhelmingly vote Republican) will not see their children go to wars. They will sit back and watch the (sanitized) war news on TV and pass the popcorn.
I am one of those who believe that Americans are never gonna get it about war, unless and until it is fought on their doorsteps, their loved ones are killed right in front of them and their towns and cities destroyed. Then at long last, Americans may well lose their taste for war.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
"In what respect Charlie?" Charles Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin
Palin reminded me of the typical Bible thumpers who ring my doorbell on Saturday mornings. They are not interested in REALLY having a conversation, they view my time with them as an opportunity to hammer me over and over with their talking points. If I ask a detailed question, a question which requires a thought process, a sophisticated grasp on the basis of the question, they go into "wash, rinse, repeat" mode. They act as if simply repeating their beliefs and talking points over and over is suddenly going to become convincing. It doesn't. Sarah Palin's repetition of her memorized talking points did nothing to convince me of anything OTHER than her hubris and lack of depth. This woman does not think in nuanced ways, she does not dive deeply into critical thinking.
These are deal-breakers as far as I am concerned. I have lived long enough, read widely enough, traveled extensively enough to know that the world is simply not black and white. The world is not a cartoon between Bullwinkle and Rocky vs. Natasha and Boris. It is complex, having complicated and entangled issues. I want a leader who grasps that directly with great powers of perception.
Plus I want a leader who understands Science. Palin believes that dinosaurs lived on Earth 6,000 years ago. This kind of ignorance is embarrassing and a big clue to the mind of the woman. As my husband said "A beauty pageant contestant, with beauty pageant answers."
These are deal-breakers as far as I am concerned. I have lived long enough, read widely enough, traveled extensively enough to know that the world is simply not black and white. The world is not a cartoon between Bullwinkle and Rocky vs. Natasha and Boris. It is complex, having complicated and entangled issues. I want a leader who grasps that directly with great powers of perception.
Plus I want a leader who understands Science. Palin believes that dinosaurs lived on Earth 6,000 years ago. This kind of ignorance is embarrassing and a big clue to the mind of the woman. As my husband said "A beauty pageant contestant, with beauty pageant answers."
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