Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Palin is a rabid rightwinger who will finish sinking the Titanic that is McCain's misguided candidacy.
Palin has been described as the face of the future GOP, which I find comforting, because she is the unvarnished extremist behind that party's feel-good rhetoric. Anti-science, anti-choice, anti-environment, anti-intellectual, but pro-gun, pro-wildlife slaugher, pro-theocracy. Sarah Palin is the pretty face masking Christian fascism, and as we're seeing, it takes very little for that mask to drop and reveal the monster beneath.
It's a good day to be a Democrat!
I've said this before in defense of Obama, and I'll use the same argument as to why Sarah Palin is a disastrous choice as VP: there simply is no correlation between years of experience and the quality of a president. Case in point: Richard Nixon was one of the most 'experienced' presidents in history. He was by all accounts a brilliant man and was second in command to one of the most effective administrations in US history. Nixon was also fundamentally dishonest and paranoid, and his presidency turned out to be as flawed as his own character. Experience on it own means nothing. It only gets its value from the person who has it. What matters is leadership. Obama is first and foremost a great leader (and his 12 years' of local and national experience are more than enough to provide a firm footing of the basics). As such, we don't know much about Palin's ability to lead, but the facts as they're starting to emerge are disturbing to say the least. And with the news that McCain had only met with her once the day before the announcement, the issue really should be about McCain's wacky judgement and callous disregard for his country.
Rush Limbaugh noted yesterday that those criticizing Palin are mostly effiminate men who get manicures. I suspect Mike Madden is in that category.
And have supporters of the Messiah forfeited any right to question Palin's experience? She has, after all, more experience than the top of the Democrat Party ticket. Unless, of course, you consider abusing your children by forcing them to go to Jeremiah Wright's America-hating church and being friends with the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayes relevant experience.
washington post
Palin Slashed Funding for Teen Moms
By Paul Kane
ST. PAUL — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live.
After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation — “SP” — Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers.
According to Passage House’s web site, its purpose is to provide “young mothers a place to live with their babies for up to eighteen months while they gain the necessary skills and resources to change their lives” and help teen moms “become productive, successful, independent adults who create and provide a stable environment for themselves and their families.”
Palin’s own daughter, Bristol, is five months pregnant and has plans to wed.
“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family,” Palin said in a statement released by the McCain campaign. “We ask the media to respect our daughter and Levi’s privacy, as has always been the tradition of children of candidates.”
Earlier today the Associated Press reported that Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, opposed funding to prevent teen pregnancies, a position that Palin also took as governor. “The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support,” she wrote in a 2006 questionnaire distributed among gubernatorial candidates.
Reporters asked McCain in November 2007 whether he supported grants for sex education in the United States, whether such programs should include directions for using contraceptives and whether he supports President Bush’s policy of promoting abstinence.
“Ahhh, I think I support the president’s policy,” McCain said.
Isn't sex with a seventeen year old called "statutory rape"?
Isn't that a crime?
Shouldn't this boy be in jail?
Time alone will tell whether Palin will be an asset or liability ... so far as the total electorate is concerned.
It is indicative and instructive of the severe biases of the media that she has so far been mocked and ridiculed ... and that her policies are seen as too conservative. The issue isn't whether that's true, because the election will decide that ... but whether the Ultra Liberal Elitists want to continue mocking her for her personality, life style, etc., in terms of putting her down for this or that.
George Will said, one day months back, that he believed the country is "center/right." I beg to differ. It is, I think, "center/left." But not much to the left. On some social issues, yes. On the War as it was foisted on us ... yes, in the beginning. It is instructive to me that as the "Surge" has played out, and success for whatever multiple reasons, emerges, I believe there will be more and more Americans who will give McCain credit for his stand on that military decision. It is not true, as Obama claims, that political concessions have not happened as a result of the Surge.
Accommodations in various provinces, and the negotiations on how long the Americans stay could not have occurred had the Shi'a, Sunnis, and Kurds (and perhaps other groups such as Iraqi Christians, Sufis, etc), not been involved. Whether they are long-lasting isn't our problem.
What will be our problem now is dove tailing our own expectations on the agreed upon with drawal schedule. I believe all Iraqi sides are now holding their breath, rearming, training, positioning for post-withdrawal life in Iraq. As such, that's not our problem, either. The American people, I'd predict ... especially those over 50 ... will remember the scenes of Vietnam going down the tube in 1975, and the collapse of Cambodia and Laos, as well as the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzogivna, etc. Those over 60 will also remember the Hungarian Revolt, the Prague Uprising, Uprisings in East Germany ... and have personal experience with precipitous withdrawals, or, withholding of funds such as in Vietnam.
Not that I opposed some of those events, in terms of how much is enough?
But, there is no doubt that Obama is radically opposed to the Surge as a concept, won't concede it's worked, militarily AND politically, and would have also refused funding for it, and for uparmoring of vehicles. As such, he'd have cost more American lives during the war. That's irresponsible.
Palin's son's deployment to Iraq will bring to bear the actual sacrifices made by the millions who have OPPOSED the war, regardless of time frame. Criticism of McCain on certain veteran votes will be countered by ... much of the needs of the VA, to help men and women with PTSD, for instance, might have been mitigated had more Americans enlisted. If they had, there would not have been shortages of men and women to serve, and the strain of multiple deployments would have not caused so much psychological damage on the same small core of soldiers and marines, primarily. Multiple tours might have still been necessary, but had the Army and Marines, and other services, been able to meet their quotas for enlistment each month, there would have been fewer multiple tours. Multiple tours cause the most of the major PTSD damage.
As a disabled combat infantry vet from Vietnam, I knew, years ago, that those who did multiple tours in Vietnam were far, far more likely to be very damaged, psychologically. The damage of multiple tours could have been ameliorated if volunteers from all sides, had enlisted, so that quotas were NEVER an issue. This works for Dems and Republicans.
Palin's demonstration of her life experiences, such as abortion/no abortion; daughter pregnant and examination of abortion/son enlisting/son serving in hostile environment/executive experience, no matter how "small" or irrelevant the State is to the total picture, will play out. I'd watch to see if enlistments rise during the next three months.
If they do, it might be because she is talking about enlistment in terms of her own son and her own family's experiences.
There are millions of Americans, Democrats, Independents, and Republicans, who have remained aloof and above the fray of the conflict. There are many reasons for that. But there are also probably as many on all sides, who have said exactly what Cheney said during the Vietnam War (and has been severely criticized for saying a billion times since), that "they had something more important to do with their lives."
That's where McCain and Palin's discussion of national service may contribute to their support. They've had service work at the level that many can relate to. Certainly, in her case, there are millions of Republican and Republican leaning independents, who have come up the way she has -- school boards; councils; mayors; state legislature experience; bigger experiences. Palin isn't meant to convert Democrats. She is meant to solidify the Republican base.
There are serious cultural divides in America.
If I were Obamistas, I'd wonder why that exists. Mocking the life styles and patterns of that side which will resonate with McCain-Palin, only reinforces the elitist and ultra liberal charges made against Obamistas. The mockery only reinforces a tendency to hunker down among those who will support the GOP candidates. So, if Obamistas were smart, they'd shut their friggin mouths and go on with the campaign.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Salon headlines in your mailbox
