Tag: Sarah Palin

Republicans steal property … And, threaten the future …

The McCain campaign and Republican Party have both been aggressive in their use of music, clips from movies, etc without, it seems, even bothering to seek copyright permission despite the promise “to protect the creative industires from privacy.” They have gotten pushback, multiple times, for their unauthorized use (read “theft”) of intellectual property. In many of these cases, the involved artists are actually quite Green and environmentalist in their donation streams and stated interests.

A Daily Kos diary highlights Heart’s (Wilson sisters) reaction to the use of Barracuda as a theme song for Sarah “Pit Bull with Lipstick” Palin.  This abuse of Heart’s property rights is not, however, an isolated case.

Well, thank God THAT’s over

Christ on a cracker what an awful spectacle.  Pissy, vacuous, hypocritical, pompous, dishonest, bitter – all the worst of America splashed on an embarrassingly big, Soylent Green screen.

Oh, and can I just ask one question?  Did John McCain actually do anything after he got out of Nam?

Besides a mercifully brief part of the bio movie recounting the touching story of how Cindy and he first met (John was still married and they both lied to each other about their ages), you’d never know from his three-day enshrinement into the Halls of High Goopertude that McCain had ever left Hanoi.

Of course, this would all be simply pathetic if it wasn’t so goddamn scary.  

“Stand up to defend our country from its enemies. Stand up for each other; for beautiful, blessed, bountiful America. Stand up, stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We’re Americans, and we never give up. We never quit. We never hide from history. We make history.”

You have to watch the video to get a full appreciation of the desperately hysterical, nothing-to-lose atmosphere, but give that segment a German language dub and it would sound eerily like Goebbels announcing the Soviets had just crossed the Oder.

And speaking of flirtations with Fascism, how about this guy’s speech?

Like a bad, way-Off-Broadway Mussolini biopic starring Don Rickles.

What a hockey puck.

And Mrs. Mooseshooter notwithstanding, does anyone doubt that the election of these Christian Corporatists would indeed bring real change in this country, as they claim?  Change not for the better, of course, but in ways that the Founding Fathers sought every Constitutional obstacle to prevent?

Let’s face it: if this authoritarian nightmare of a political convention doesn’t get you off your ass to vote, and convince others to do the same, then you simply don’t understand what is at stake here.

Sarah Palin Should Have Mentioned Gustav…..

and its survivors across the wide swath of Louisiana which has been tortured by the devastation he left behind. Saying in last night’s speech that she stands behind our fellow citizens in the area would only have been right–especially were she to have called upon other Americans to donate to the Red Cross as has Obama. (Link below the fold).

Now for the “meat”–following is a poem I’ve written to commemorate the third anniversary of Katrina and the federal flood. It is in the voice of the mother of 8-year-old and 9-year-old boys who have a disabled grandmother. While it is fiction, it’s based on things people actually went through during Katrina and flood and in the aftermath.

Why The Obsession With Palin When Louisiana’s Hurting? (With Donation Info)

As duplicative, repetitive diaries keep being posted about Sarah Palin on other blogs, the agonizing aftermath of Gustav in Louisiana is being ignored, if it hasn’t been forgotten already.

Don’t get me wrong–but there’s plenty of time to go into Palin’s issues between now and the election (though as Obama has said, we shouldn’t go into Bristol’s pregnancy because that’s a family problem of the Palins.) And those having to do with her work as a leader are important. But we should not lose sight of what’s going on in Louisiana as we focus on them. Because the disaster and anguish continue in Gustav’s aftermath.

Charges of sexism: whence do they come?

Crossposted on Daily Kos and My Left Wing.

The latest defense of Sarah Palin is that those on the left who are asking questions and criticizing are being sexist. Those charges are coming from a couple of interesting places.

Firstly, Mike “I’m Still Relevant” Huckabee weighs in:

Calling media critiques of Palin “unprecedented” (“they never did this to Chelsea Clinton,” he said), Huckabee predicted that Palin’s victimization would rouse support even from non-Republicans outraged by sexist sentiment.

The relevance of Bristol.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and My Left Wing.

I’ve got to be with Wolcott on this one, who is apparently standing with Lawrence Auster on this one::

The issue is whether McCain should have chosen as his vice presidential running mate-and thus required the Republican party to approve that choice-a woman who has all these issues going on in her family.

McCain has put the conservative base in a position where it has to bend itself out of shape to maintain its support for the Republican ticket.

Now, I personally am delighted that McCain–maverick that he is–chose a candidate that, within hours of the selection, has exploded into a veritable pile of soap-opera-ish stories and sagas. I like watching the Right scramble about, trying to find new and exciting ways to justify their deeply held beliefs and morals (chuckle) with their unending quest for power.

But some have deemed portions of Palin’s life to be “off limits,” especially in the case of Bristol’s pregnancy.

I have to vaguely disagree.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

Cross posted at dkos

After the stellar week that was the Democratic Convention it was only natural that the following week would be a profound disappointment.

Every day of the Democratic Convention went off without a hitch. Each speech was better than the last. Each speaker gave the speech of a lifetime. The fireworks went off on cue unlike the memory of the balloons that got stuck, and people cried with joy, happiness and pride for what their country could produce.

I watched every day and was enthralled by the ability of every speaker to deliver a well-crafted, inspiring speech.

The Republicans could not match it.

U.S. Unfolds Gestapo-like Raids at GOP Convention (updated)

Amy Goodman reported from the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul), site of the Republican National Convention, September 1, 2008, Labor Day:

Armed groups of police in the Twin Cities have raided more than a half-a-dozen locations since Friday night in a series of preemptive raids before the Republican convention. The coordinated searches were led by Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher but conducted in coordination with federal agencies….

Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the FBI is at least one of the “federal agencies” acting in concert with the Minneapolis/St. Paul police departments. A professor at the University of Minnesota has snapped a photo of FBI presence at one of the raids. Many of these police gestapo actions involved two dozen or more riot police entering private homes with guns drawn, handcuffing the residents, and rifling through the house to search computers, and political literature.

Obama, Biden Talk Politics – 60min- Video

Last night Barack and Joe spoke, and even though a short interview they covered alot of ground.

In their first interview together as running mates, Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Joseph Biden discuss their roles and strategies for the upcoming presidential election. Steve Kroft reports.

McCain: No one could have anticipated Hurricane Sarah

John McCain is focusing on the wrong disaster.

The Category 3 that’s about to hit isn’t off the Gulf Coast, and it isn’t named Gustav.

It’s seated in the Gulfstream IV next to him, and it’s named Sarah.

What do the VP picks add to their tickets?

What exactly was the point of last week’s announcements for vice presidential picks?  On one hand we have a shell of a candidate promoting “change” but doing everything in his power to establish himself as an establishment candidate, picking a Washington, D.C. insider with a record of corporate whoring and unquestioning support for U.S. imperial policy.  Small wonder Barack Obama is either neck-and-neck with or trailing John McCain in the polls; he insists on turning off the very people he needs to put him over the top, including the Clinton supporters.  On the other hand we have the Republican candidate picking a “hockey mom,” with even less political experience than his Democratic counterpart (the very thing he chides his rival for), just so he can pander to the bloc of Clinton supporters inclined to vote for McCain out of spite.

In all the hype and bluster, though, one important question remains: what does either VP pick actually add to the ticket?  Joe Biden, a typical DLC insider with a hawkish foreign policy record and a habit of voting for bills that hurt working Americans, is just the sort of candidate likely to further alienate progressives – the very people Obama needs to put him over the top against McCain.  Assuming progressives will get behind the Democratic nominee simply because he and his followers choose to deny any other alternative exists has always been a recipe for disaster.  Just ask Al Gore and John Kerry.  Obama has done everything he can to blow this election by turning off all those who put their faith and hopes in him thinking he represented a departure from the DLC.  Picking Biden, though it allows for a tough yet compliant attack dog in the general election who makes up for a perceived lack of experience, really does nothing for the Democratic nominee’s chances.

Then there’s Sarah Palin.  I get that she was tapped to be McCain’s veep because of her youth and sex, but those are really the only two things she has going for her as a candidate.  As Michael Moore explained to Keith Olbermann the other night, McCain’s cynical pander is based on the assumption that American women are stupid – that they’ll vote for a woman because of her gender and not her politics.  Her record and positions are typically extreme right-wing: opposed to abortion rights, opposed to gay marriage, supports tax cuts for the wealthy and police state thuggery, among other horrendous policies.  None of those qualities, however, have won a presidential election – not for the past sixteen years, anyway (the last two were rigged, so they cannot be counted on as legitimate examples of right-wing extremism winning anything).  Women who actually care about their reproductive rights and are offended by Stepford wife-type politicians may be galvanized to vote against McCain and his so-called “hockey mom.”  There’s also her firing of Alaska’s public safety director, Walter Monegan, for refusing to fire her former brother-in-law.  This scandal is so outrageous there that the Alaskan legislature is investigating what the Washington Post is dubbing Palin’s own “trooper-gate.”

This may be the first time since George H.W. Bush lost to Bill Clinton that a Republican candidate blew an election by dubious virtue of being dumber than his Democratic counterpart, but don’t count McCain out yet; there are plenty of caging lists, hackable electronic voting machines, and bought state secretaries with which to steal this election, along with a Democratic rival who insists on replaying the Kerry campaign.

Palin Paid $150 to Murder Wolves


Defenders of Wildlife Asks Judge to Shut Down Palin’s Wolf Bounty Program

“The Governor is overstepping her legal authority by offering cash payments for each wolf killed by aerial gunners,” stated Tom Banks, Defenders of Wildlife’s Alaska Associate. “That’s a bounty by anyone’s standards regardless of what they call it.”

Crossposted at Native American Netroots

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