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Saturday Links & News
Posted by Raven on August 30th, 2008
Palin Nation Edition!
Boston Herald headline says much:
Sen. John McCain’s surprise selection of Gov. Sarah Palin, a hockey mom who hunts and fishes and has a son headed to Iraq, caught many off guard, but her supporters in Alaska say she’s a perfect fit who can pull in women and younger voters.
Palin, 44, a maverick governor and a staunch, anti-abortion, pro-gun rights conservative, is a political outsider who has five children and a working-class background.
Fox News:
The Race is On
Blue Star Chronicles/Right Pundits:
HAWT CHANGE
WaPo:
Is She Ready For This?
Ed Morrisey:
What Palin Does for McCain, and Obama
WaTimes:
McCain choice impacts energy debate
Alabama Improper has checked out Palin’s hubby:
A hottie in his own right!
NH Union Leader:
She really shakes things up.
My own thoughts:
1: She speaks for small town America- that elitist Obama attacked during the primaries.
2: She is a working Moms with kids, working Mom with a handicapped kid. A working mom with a husband who has done physical labor for a living.
3: She appeals to women still smarting over the treatment Hillary got from the Dems
4: People see a politician who is NOT afraid to take on her own party to break the old boy network and expose corruption
5: She appeals to conservative voters- they like the example she has set regarding her views on abortion.
6: She appeals to blue collar voters who see a family who has got somewhere through hard work by both parents.
6: Taxpayers see a politician who returned state money to the tax payer instead of spending it on grandiose projects
7: She appeals to people who are cynical about the power of lobbyists and she’s been a great economic manager.
8: Someone who has more experience in actual government from running a small town (great grass roots training) to governor of a state which is MORE experience than Barack Jesus Obama has had…
9: The governor of an energy rich state with a realistic view about drilling oil.
10: Someone who can look Biden in the eye and confront a Washington insider who plagiarized his speeches and is from same old, same old political machine.
11: Someone who is a smart debater and is not intimidated by the media or male politicians.
12: Someone who is not tied to big city media elites, celebrity culture, Hollywood stars. In other words somebody with whom they can identify.
13: A straight talker about real issues.
14: Someone who actually had a real job before she went into politics.
15: Someone who got there without the machinations of vast political machine.
16: Someone who has never been connected with crazed racist preachers, terrorists turned university lecturers, corrupt convicted slum lords, looney fringe groups
17: A smart, articulate, honest, good living politician who happens to be a woman.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Why do people think its O.K to have “working class” people in high profile jobs? Would you go to Burger King to have heart surgery? No. Would you ask you plumber for help with your 401K? No. Then why is fuck is it O.K to have a “working girl” be second in command. Biden is going to make her cry during the VP debates. Of course the idea of a working class politician only make sense if you buy into the idea that there is a real class difference in politicians (Plain is not working class, no politician is). Republicans have mastered the art of using “-isms” to unite their base. In this case Republicans are working the “classism” concept. Reagan as a cowboy, Bush Jr as a fighter pilot, McCain as a maverick… These are all illusions to make people feel that “Republicans are just like ya’ll normal folk” (also notice the Freudian theme). The reality is that all of these politicians are so far removed from the middle class that no one who reads this blog would even know how to approach them.
August 30th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Palin=hotty!
Biden=snotty!
I’ve been hoping that Palin would be the pick for months. Super excited!
I hope they will make a swing through Raleigh. I’ll be like, “who’s the old dude with Palin?”
August 30th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
I actually really like Palin. And this is coming from someone who still can’t bring himself to vote for McCain. I also [love / am ticked off by] how quickly the media/left is labeling this as madman McCain’s doom… (These are the same deluded folks who still think Obama is destined for a landslide despite the ambivalence of the polls) I won’t be surprised if he gets a 5-point bump for this.
August 30th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Palin never would have been considered if she were a man.. that’s condescending and tokenism. John McCain seems to have missed the point that women voted for Hillary, not just because she was a woman, but because she was a woman as qualified as the male candidates. If McCain died the first day in office, would Palin be ready to run a superpower?
-Calling Obama elitist is bizarre, and since both Bush and McCain are far more wealthy, I’m not sure what it means. Is it because he’s smart? Truly, the most awful thing about the last eight years of Republicanism is the anti-intellectual spin. The voters who were scared of someone “too smart”, who wanted a “Good ol boy” gave us an embarrassing president who was over his head. Obama is a smart guy. we need a smart guy. Take a look at his resume, shockingly, there’s not a thing in there about his being a Nazi or any proof of elitism.
“a politician who returned state money to the tax payer instead of spending it on grandiose projects”. Um, she was originally FOR the bridge to nowhere until it got unpopular…Alaska pulls out nearly two times as much money as it pitches in to the Treasury… so that money she gives Alaskan is actually coming from YOUR pocket, not theirs.
I’m glad she has been fighting corruption, but not sure being mayor of a tiny town and then governor of Alaska for less than two years trumps Obama’s business experience, law experience and senate experience (12 years state and federal).
I surely don’t want an evangelical like Palin telling me what to do with my body because of her religious beliefs.
Overall, I think we’re going to have to go back to the actual issues. And frankly, I don’t think I like that the top 1% of Americans own more of America than the bottom 90%. I don’t think I like that the Bush/Cheneys have not touched the health insurance problem in eight years, and have not been leaders on energy, but just dealt with the same old–sending our wealth to the middle east. I don’t think I like that Bush started a war against another country without provocation and now has us deeply in debt over it. I don’t like how they’ve tried to change the balance of the branches of government, and I don’t think I like the state of the economy, and that our infrastructure is falling apart while we send billions upon billions to Iraq. McCain is Bush. He used to be McCain, but has become Bush to kiss the butt of conservatives, and in doing so has lost his appeal.
August 30th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
JayT said it best at Wizbang:
http://wizbangblog.com/content/2008/08/30/mccain-goes-for-obamas-negative.php
:ptbaa:
August 30th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Dj,
You just insulted the great majority of Democrats…the working class. And you managed to bash women at the same time. Good going. And evidence of the typical classless, snotty liberal view.
It’s important to ME to know Palin’s hubby is a commercial fisherman – who work harder than just anyone in the world, who have rough hands and who KNOW what real work is. Mrs. Palin has a far better understanding of the issues working class people face; Biden and Obama cannot even go there and I bet they don’t. There will be no tears- she’s one tough lady who has taken on her own party and lived to tell us about it.
I suggest you keep commenting your hate. I’m going to start using your comments as evidence of liberal class bias and all that.
:fastshooter:
August 31st, 2008 at 1:39 am
Dina, “elitist” has nothing to do with money. If it did, the vast majority of college professors would not be elitist.
I’m sorry you’re so blinded by worship of the new messiah that you can’t even take the time to discover such a simple concept.
August 31st, 2008 at 3:34 am
Dina has some valid points and a good head on her shoulders.
Raven,
The working class bracket hasn’t voted Democratic since George Wallace was governor of Alabama. Modern Democrats are typically middle class, poor, or over-educated. Yes, Democrats have always been able to count on labor unions as a voting block, but labor in the US has been dying since the 80’s. I think your confusing working-class with low socioeconomic status (check out wikipedia’s entry for republican/democratic party). The parties are changing, you might want to get with the times (kidding). My post isn’t a bash on the working class, it’s the truth. Working class is a term used to describe people who do physical labor for a job. It’s not a jab at someone’s educational status because many working class jobs require years of training (plumber, mechanic, electrician…). My problem is when people exalt the worker to the status of model citizen because that is an uber commie thing to do. Stalin and Mao purged large numbers of their educated (read as non-working class) citizens when they were in power. They filled all the high skilled jobs left behind with working class people (because communism is all about the worker). The result was shattered economies and thousands of people dying. If you really want to see what happens when you switch working class and non-working class people around, next time you need to go to a doctor go see an auto mechanic instead. That was pretty much life in communist China and Russia.
So why does my post bash women? I don’t even use the words woman/lady/female/XX-chromosome in my post. My post was about “-isms” and class. You really need to lay-off the identity politics, particularly the gender ones. I was a littlie worried when you said in a prior post “I’m a woman and I never supported Hillary” but now it’s very apparent that you choose your candidates based on who you can identify with, not based on issues (Palin is a working class woman, like you). The irony is that Palin belongs to “feminists for life” (http://feministsforlife.org/news/ffl-member-sarah-palin-vp.htm) and would so rip you one for taking an identity politics stance.
:madshooter: :madshooter:
(I can’t express in words tacky these things are. I love them!!)
August 31st, 2008 at 3:47 am
i don’t know if its just cause its late at night, but are my post being screened???
“dj Says: Your comment is awaiting moderation.
August 31st, 2008 at 3:34 am”
please tell me you don’t screen peoples post?????
August 31st, 2008 at 7:17 am
We moderate any comment with a link in it…due to spam. Nothing personal. The only names I have banned from this site are Bunny and less than a handful of other drive-bu-hate commenters. And they all know why.
As for working class vs poor, the Democrats try to intertwine these two groups. That’s what SCHIP was all about in case you forgot. If the Democrats had their way, all groups who earn less than 150,000 would be called, no make that labeled, poor.
I AM POOR according to most people’s standards- I earn less than 30,000/yr. I work in an occupation that is certainly considered laborious and indeed is hard work. I need every damn penny I earn to live- and it pisses me off to see government take more and more for taxes, for the good of all, making it harder for me to remain free and able to make my own choices. That’s right. While I bust my ass to pay mt bills on time, others sit around and work once in awhile when they feel like it…and rely on welfare type programs to pay their bills.
No thanks. Sarah Palin is not an elistist like Obama is. Like Biden is. Elitists? She is not at the level Biden is at, and most the leaders of Lemoncrats. When have Obama and Biden gotten their well manicured soft and supple little hands dirty? With dead fish, with gutting fish and cleaning human waste? When was the last time they woke up and faced 16 hour days doing what I DO for work? Do they have disabled children? Or do they hire nannies????
Speaking of disabled kids, why should they be aborted? It’s all about the crass choice so many women make when they spread their legs- easy to do- but the consequences are hard and abortion takes that away. It’s not about religion to me…it’s about killing a human being. Democrats will always fight for this. Where is the justice? The fairness? The opportunity for all?
Democrat ideals are horrible. And will cause this country to collapse.
August 31st, 2008 at 9:54 am
Raven,
a. I think we’re far closer to “collapse” after 8 years of Bush than we were after Clinton.
b. Most of your arguments note that Palin and OBama agree on much.
c. Obama has a history of community organizer AND 12 years senate experience, as well as working knowledge of law and education in political science and international relations, and taught CONSTITUTIONAL law.
d. Teleprompter? Did you watch the Obama speech? In 45 minutes he never looked at the teleprompter as far as I could see. Last night I watched McCain talking to a crowd and he did not speak for 30 seconds at a time without looking at his notes.
e. The fact that Palins husband is a fisherman and works for BP does not make her any more qualified to run a country. It just doesn’t.
f. Bush and McCain walk the walk? You mean you’re HAPPY with Bush’s record? You mean you’re HAPPY with the Bush/McCain Iraq policy?
g. It pisses you off that the government takes more taxes, but Obama wants to give YOU lower taxes than McCain. And though unfortunately economic experts predict that BOTH parties economic plans will put us deeper into debt, McCain’s plan will be the greater debt-maker.
Carlos, Do you mean you think that the vast majority of college professors are elitist? Just because they’re educated?
I’d loved to have been able to go to Harvard too, but the fact that I didn’t and am middle class doesn’t mean I despise the educated. I kind of think we need them. And I think I’d rather have a highly educated person performing surgery, or deciding national policy.
Bush, McCain and Obama all went to top schools–Bush and McCain by influence (Warner admitted he influenced McCain into school on the tube just yesterday), and they both nearly flunked out while Obama excelled– but who’s counting?
You’re calling Obama the new messiah is a little creeepy- don’t put words into Democratic mouths, we just think he’ll do a better job. It’s the Republicans who’ve started the messiah thing, because they tend to avoid issue arguments and go for personality arguments. (“celebrity?” what the hell kind of a cop-out is that? Let’s talk about the economy instead).
August 31st, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Dina rocks! :mrgreen:
So that’s where Bunny went! Honestly, i couldn’t understand what half his posts were anyway and wow could he cuss. glad to hear you don’t scan posts :biggrin:
The national poverty threshold for a single person is $10,400 (wikipedia: poverty threshold). However, there is the concept of the “working poor”. It’s where people who work make enough so that they don’t qualify for assistance, yet don’t make enough for an adequate standard of living. People who work that are still poor. That’s a rough spot to be in and in some ways it’s harder to pull yourself out of that situation then it would be if you were just regular poor. It’s hard to know just how many “working poor” there are in America because by normal standards the working poor have jobs, contribute to society, and are getting by. The fact that they don’t stand out in most surveys makes them really hard to help.
I don’t think most people view abortion as a form of birth control (I really wish I had a source for this). Having an abortion is a horrible experience weather you’re pro-life or pro-choice. I think when you start holding abortions in the same standard as birth control you make the connection that using birth control is also a pro-life or pro-choice question (its not). I’m only mentioning the abortion-birth control connection because you briefly talk about how abortion mitigates the consequences of slutty behavior (…but the consequences are hard and abortion takes that away.). In theory birth control also mitigates the consequences of slutty behavior but I don’t think you can make a good connection between the two.
:airforce: :retard: (you need more icons!)
August 31st, 2008 at 10:53 pm
Dina, I think the vast majority of college professors are elitist because of their obvious disdain for the “less educated” (a polite way of saying “those who earn a living by actually producing). Admittedly, my proof of this is somewhat limited because I’ve only taught college-level a short time in my life, and only attended college 5 years, so most of my perception is anecdotal.
I grew up in a family whose worship of intelligence was nearly unbounded. Looking back, it is disgusting, but I can’t change that. What I can do is appreciate what people who produce do for our society as a whole, instead of denigrating them to some second-class status, as most of my professors did.
What I can’t appreciate is some whiny do-nothing whose whole existence is to be served by the guvmint and who is offended at the lightest suggestion that maybe, just maybe, one ought to be able to provide something for one’s self, and I don’t appreciate those who promote such behavior.
As far as having an educated surgeon work on me (as has happened), or on my son’s two brain tumors, yes, that’s a lot better than my wife or neighbor doing that. But typically, you’re changing the argument. I have never said education or educated people are bad. What I said was that most college professors are elitist, and now I’ve explained why I believe that.
And as for educated people running foreign policy, it would depend upon whether they were grounded in the reality of human nature, and Obama is either not aware of true evil and of evil people in the world, or he chooses to ignore that in pursuit of his own goals. The reality is you can’t win an argument with evil because evil is not reasonable, so “diplomacy” with evil people only buys the evil ones more time to perform their dastardly deeds. That may not rise to the status of “issue” for you, but it certainly does for me.
September 1st, 2008 at 10:37 am
Who is the whiney do-nothing you refer to? Sounds like Bush. What are you taking about, that Obama is unaware of evil because he talks about using diplomacy? Did you miss the part where after he mentioned using diplomacy, the Bush admin actually finally started talking to “our enemies?” Attacking him on that was just crap, every government tries using diplomacy with their enemies. That’s why war is a LAST resort.
Here’s the crux of it for me. Most of the attacks on Obama on this site are based on some image thing (elitist) instead of policy. I don’t get from these posts exactly why you hate/despise Obama so much. Most of the hate-filled nonsense about liberals is so bizarre and off fact I wonder what you are all possibly reading. I am a liberal and here is what I (and the liberals I know) believe:
I believe in fiscal responsibility. You don’t pay for welfare OR wars if you can’t afford it and don’t have the money.
I believe in smaller government because anything more is just bloated bureaucracy and costs too much, and I’m angry that Bush has bloated beyond all means.
I believe that if a corporation gets rich on Americans, they should hire Americans. They should not get special tax breaks. They should be held accountable for polluting. They can figure out how to be clean AND profitable. We should NOT be funneling our money into China and having all our goods made there.
I believe we should have been independent of fossil fuels years ago, we have to do something about it NOW, that we have the brains and the finances, and we should NOT be sending all our money to fund enemies in the Middle East.
I believe the war in Iraq was and is a criminal waste of lives and treasure for the personal goals of a few people.
I believe no one else should tell me what to do with my body.
I believe that we hold to the Geneva conventions if we hope for other countries to do the same for our soldiers. We don’t make up reasons why “this one” doesn’t count.
I believe that we need universal health care because what we have is not working, and other countries have managed to do it well, and that stories to the contrary are propaganda. We have the ingenuity to do it right.
I believe we should not be outsourcing war contracts to companies that have insider opportunities and have stolen (lost?) billions of dollars from the taxpayer.
I believe in kicking out illegal aliens and that Bush’s “worker” program is just a way to create a legal slave-wage class.
I believe that Gay’s who love each other and want to marry aren’t hurting a soul by doing so, and anyone who thinks they are hurting the “institution of marriage” must have a weak marriage.
I also believe that this administration has been run by a President that does not have the wisdom or intelligence for the job. That this administration has favored big corporations over the American people every time, because big corporations make big contributions. That George Bush started this war to 1. have another foothold in the middle east because that’s where the oil is, and 2. because he wanted to be THE GUY who brought democracy to Iraq. Neither good enough reasons to destroy a country, spend billions of dollars and kill thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis. That he lied without conscience to get us into Iraq- that doing so showed a huge lack of respect for those who signed on to actually DEFEND our country. That his being pro-life is horse crap when he has such disregard for human life. That his tax breaks for the rich were fiscally criminal during wartime as well as his refusal to ask Americans to sacrifice anything. That his ignoring the health care crisis and the energy crisis shows a profound lack of leadership. I believe the Republicans have fostered “anti-intellectualism” for their own gain, which is Maoist and irresponsible, and yes, unpatriotic, as our intellect and creativity is what made us a superpower in the first place.
September 1st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Dina,
Sorry to break the news to you, but George Bush/Dick Cheney are not running for President in 2008. Our choice is between Barack Obama/Joe Biden vs. John McCain/Susan Palin.
What I find curious is that I agree with a fair number of your basic positions (fiscal responsibility, smaller government, better controls over gov’t contracts, less special interest laws for favored companies) and possibly with some others, if I correctly interpret what you’re really saying once we got beyond cliche and talking points. The irony, though is that I see McCain more likely to effect these desirable policies than Obama, since Obama’s program is a rehash of the 60’s/70’s totalitarian left playbook. The central precept of the totalitarian left is that the State owns the individual.
Divided government has great merit in limiting the ability of the government to do harm.
September 1st, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Curiously, I found myself agreeing with some of Dina’s initial points, too, until they turned into the sophist talking points of the far left.
As far as “my own body” goes, I can find nothing in the Constitution that allows the feds to make laws affecting abortion one way or the other. My personal opinion is that it is murder, but that is a question properly left to the individual states to decide. The same with gay “marriage”. They are both abominations to me personally, but I would have a real hard time supporting a federal ban on either and still believe the Constitution means what it says.
And as far as having a “weak marriage”, what parsec of space did that come from because it wasn’t from this solar system?
September 2nd, 2008 at 8:15 am
Nope, Bush Cheney are not running. But the old McCain, the one who was “maverick” enough to fight special interests and lobbyists is not running either. The McCain that’s running never once fought back when the Bush campaign lied and trashed him in their election. Never stood up against the Rove tactics which went on to become the Valerie Plame tactics. He started kissing evangelical butt to the point of picking Palin just to make them happy, not for the good of the country (because an anti-abortion stand is clearly more important than war or economy or the corruption of billions of dollars being “lost” in Iraq, or actually defeating Bin Laden). He thought going into Iraq was okay with him. And he is of the party that has created huge economic waste (Trillions on Iraq, how many billions “LOST”?) and record deficits and so failed to address our most pressing needs.
Also, Carlos, forgot to mention in my last post that the democrats are the ones who have stood for raising minimum wage for the average “working guy” that you champion.
If you both agree with many of my basic positions, why do you so hate democrats with a fervor.. enough for this post to call them Nazis and communists among other things. The name calling gets so out of hand that this post loses credibility. The “Messiah” label is a transparent attempt to pose Obama as the bogeyman antichrist and scare the people who don’t think beyond that. It’s an insult to the importance of the political race.
And Carlos, I’ve made an attempt for normal discussion about the issues here. You have called me “sophist” and that I “can’t even take the time to discover such a simple concept.” –who’s the elitist?
September 2nd, 2008 at 10:47 am
Raven,
I love this pick for many of the same reasons you have provided. It appears that she is striking fear amongst the leftards.
I would love to go see Mcain/Palin on Saturday but then I would have to miss the Lobos spanking A&M.
d
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:55 pm
Thanks for the linky lurve. Sarah Palin has rejuvenated this soul.