Sep 17 2008
It won’t be easy, you’ll think it strange When I try to explain the Bush Doctrine and the reason I fired Walt Monegan You won’t believe me I wanted it to happen, but then I changed So I chose Jesus Don’t cry for me Wasilla As for fortune, and as for fame They are illusions Don’t cry for me Wasilla Have I lied too much? |
Sep 16 2008
After 8 years in the United States of the war on science by the Bush administration, things wouldn’t be much better during a McCain presidency. From the Bad Astronomy blog at Discover magazine: John McCain: literally antiscience. “I am not a fan of John McCain… I have had my doubts on his support for science, but my fears have been at least in part confirmed.”
Phil Plait goes on to quote McCain from an AP story, as he changes the subject away from his running mate to Obama:
“That’s nearly a million every day, every working day he’s been in Congress,” McCain said. “And when you look at some of the planetariums and other foolishness that he asked for, he shouldn’t be saying anything about Governor Palin.”
Sep 15 2008
Alaskans recently had a charged public debate over whether mining companies should be able to discharge toxic waste into drinking water supplies. The issue was submitted to the voters with a ballot measure. Polling by supporters showed public strongly favored the measure, even obtaining the support of persons who never supported environmental measures because this issue also affected the livelihood of fishermen. The tide then quickly changed days before the election when Palin violated state law by advocating for the defeat of the measure. Working within the rules of the system, a complaint was filed, and a state agency found that both the state regulators and Palin had violated the law. However, the damage was already done and the measure was defeated. A win by any means at any cost. Is this what lies ahead for our presidential election?
Sep 15 2008
It’s beginning to sound more and more like a Palin vs. Obama Presidential race. My biggest fear is that conservative and independent voters around the country will wake up on November 5 and find out, much to their surprise, that it’s John McCain that won the office of President of the United States and only then will they wake from their stupor and see, and regret the silliness of what they’ve accomplished.
Talk about a bill of goods. The sales pitch that the Republican supporters swallowed hook, line and sinker is something to behold.
The Democrats used their meeting to tell a richer, more expansive national story, one more or less in tune with the party’s platform and aspirations. In contrast, as we go to press, the Republicans are staging an elaborate fraud, the purpose of which is to divert the public’s attention from their disastrous mismanagement of government and to deceive voters about their agenda. Rick Davis, John McCain’s campaign manager, admitted as much when he said, “This election is not about issues. This election is about a composite view of what people take away from these candidates.” (The Nation Editorial Board – 8/3/08)
They are once again getting snookered by the pandering politicos who run the radical right. Evangelicals, ever the willing suckers, are getting sucked in yet again. Same thing with rednecks, soccer moms, and erstwhile social conservatives of all stripes. “Join us again, [wink, wink]. We’ll string you along for another four years!”
Sep 15 2008
Today at High Noon Eastern Time we can hear from many of the people right in Alaska about Sarah.
As we’ve already found out if anyone really knew much about her, and her so called executive experience, they kept it under wraps, plenty of wraps, and than tried to sneak her by the American People who do the hiring and want the resumes!
My thoughts, with all that’s come to light, they were calling her a rising political star on personality only, as John McCains daughter says, PERIOD!
Sep 14 2008
Gibson Aims At Palin: Shoots Himself In Face. Shoot-out at the ABC corral and another media big-wig bites the dust. How did the Alaska hockey-mom manage to turn the tables on yet another so much smarter east-coast big-shot? Easy: by asking sensible questions, followed with succinct measures of straight-talk.
Attacking Alaska Governor Sarah Palin established the opposite of what Obama bots in the media had been hoping to accomplish: by confirming male media’s anti-Palin-McCain bias (again): and that Gov. Palin is exactly the sort of Vice-President America needs in the White House.
Sarah heard Gibson out, focused on the target, and squeezed the trigger: delivering the only fact that matters to 99% of Americans:”if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend.” Next question.
Dems whining about an effective ‘elevator speech’ on national security could learn a lot from Palin’s remarks: straight at the target with every shot in the black. Clear statements nobody can mistake, friend and foe alike.
Dems fire blanks on questions of national security. Dems can’t even get a bead on a ‘foreign policy’ sitting-duck like Palin, a hockey-mom who just found out she’s slated to become the first female Vice-President in American history. And this isn’t the first time Dems have missed.
We can thank Dems for letting the least popular and most ineffective President in US history destroy America’s stature in the world, terrified Republicans might call them names. George Bush is still sitting in the White House, largely because all the Dems together couldn’t or wouldn’t lay a glove on this feckless narcissist. Dems simply nominated one of their own.
McCain made a wise choice. Palin’s message: defend America and demand exacting analysis from subordinates and area experts. Gibson and the rest of McCain’s critics can’t seem to look past Gov. Palin’s chest. If they could they’d see what many average Americans already see so clearly: a strong passionate heart that sings true for the red, white and blue.
Sarah Palin is precisely the kind of home-cooked apple-pie spiced with black-powder wisdom America needs to recover from Dem capitulation during the last eight years. Not a dish Dems are likely to savor, but a banquet for Americans starved for change and working for a bright American century.
Sep 13 2008
Much of the focus of John McCain’s campaign for president has been on his reputed experience (and just as often, the alleged lack of same for his opponent). But there has been sparse actual examination of how that argument should be measured. Is spending five and a half years in a prisoner of war camp 40 years ago preparation to run the largest governmental bureaucracy in the world? If so, then, as Jon Stewart said, “Guantanamo Bay isn’t a prison, it’s a leadership academy.” Is 36 years in Congress the yardstick for executive readiness? Or is it two years as governor of the third smallest state in the nation, preceded by the mayoralty of a frosty township of 6,000? McCain and his running mate, Sarah Palin, appear to disagree on this issue:
Sep 13 2008
I belong to the generation that had school drills for the Big One. Many of us can remember the look of terror in the eyes of our parents as we sat around the TV watching President Kennedy announce the “quarantine” of Cuba on October 7, 1962.
Will the world’s families once again feel that horrible terror?
(cross-posted on dKos)
Sep 13 2008
Let’s play “let’s pretend” and the issue is the events that led up to Milk Creek in 1879. Who would have listened to the Indian agent Nathan C. Meeker in this current election, and who would have listened to Chief Colorow who had told Major Thomas T. Thornburgh that there would be bloodshed if they crossed into the Ute’s reservation in this current election? Let’s start off with what’s current, remembering that polar bears aren’t the only ones who have had to relocate.
…but the Arctic is the scene for a new kind of international gold rush…
Arctic a potential conflict zone, Europe warnedBRUSSELS, Belgium – European Union leaders will receive a stark warning next week of potential conflict with Russia over energy resources at the North Pole as global warning melts the ice cap and aggravates international security threats.
See video
Sep 12 2008
I’ve wondered why some Governors haven’t come out to speak to what their involvement is as to their States National Guard, when there isn’t a Natural Disaster, the involvement as the Commander in Chief of those Guard Units, as well as the Involvement when the Federal Government steps in and takes Command, sending them into occupations as regular military units, as right out of the gate Mrs Palin claim was to broad experience in Guard affairs.
Well I need ask nor wait any longer.
Palin put her ‘Experience’ as a Commander in Chief to rest last night in the Interview on ABC with Charlie Gibson, in her answer on the ‘Bush Doctrine’, as a Governor with her States National Guard units being called into National Service and Fighting Overseas, She doesn’t know It and apparently never understood what it was nor the implications to her state and her state guards readiness if she had a need to call them into duty.
Sep 12 2008
Cross posted from The Wild Wild Left as yesterday’s Open Thread. My husband opined it was “crass” of me to post this yesterday, but perfectly acceptable today. Hence, the delay.
I have a problem not unlike the one that got KO fired. 9/11 gets dragged out and almost celebrated by the fear-mongering right. It is a tragedy that gets relived over and over by a populace that had rarely know large-scale tragedies on its soil. I find the way they use it is abusive, true abuse in both the misuse fashion and the masochistic type.
2,974 dead. I remember my horror, my tears as it occurred.
4,076 Americans dead due to their being sent to invade Iraq for a crime Iraq did not commit.
1,255,026 Iraqis dead. Where is the horror for their deaths, the remembrance ceremonies for those who had their lives taken in retribution for something they had no part in?
It brings to mind what John Trudell said (not just in Thunderheart, but in real life when Leonard Peltier was framed.) “Sometimes they just HAVE to kill us. They have to make someone pay.”
Iraq is the biggest patsy ever created, created mostly for profit.
Sep 12 2008
The topic below was originally posted yesterday on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal.
Change is passé. Barack Obama squeezed all the juice out of the change orange since announcing his candidacy in February 2007. Personally, I never thought much of the “change you can believe in” slogan but there is no denying Obama went far with it.
However, Sarah Palin’s selection as McCain’s running mate has convinced the public change is coming no matter who wins. Even worse, the very same corporate media that complained Obama only offered “words” compared to Hillary Clinton’s policy specifics during the primary season now argue that McCain’s lack of specifics does not diminish his stature as a maverick. Is that fair? Of course not! But there is no sense whining about it. These are the cards we’ve been dealt.
So how do we change the narrative? The solution is to present the voting public with a stark choice: progress or calamity. Change vs. more of the same is stale and no longer resonates.