Campaign 2008

[Jobber of the Week 0]

This wasn't always the case, and it's sad that it is now.

 

And Then There Was One

by Thomas L. Friedman

Number one, McCain spent about a week before the conventions started talking about how his plan was the kitchen sink in addition to drilling. Although honestly, judging by their lip service on energy I like Obama's plan better because it paid some to mass transit. McCain's rhetoric was essentially about hydrogen and other ways to improve cars, while intending to still have people individually wrapped in their own steel shell and motors, and driving themselves around. Figures, I guess, since a lot of people still think the nation's economy hinges on the Big Three, and want the government to keep a focus that keeps one of the few large industries that will still employ Americans for manufacturing (albeit NOT under the Big Three but under Toyota and other foreign brands); and Dan Quayle owns Chrysler through an investment firm now.

 

Number two, Obama's already said that if pressed he'll accept offshore drilling as part of a plan that includes the other things he wants. He pretty much gave that one away.

 

Third, McCain has also been promoting offshore, the only person trying to drill in the preserve is Palin, which is sorta understandable for someone who hadn't ever run for national office until last Friday and wasn't vetted at all. Her state swims in money and is nearly a socialized republic thanks to all the government subsidies flowing their way as a result of all that federal land. She's just trying to redirect money to her neck of the woods, which is expected of someone who wasn't expecting anyone in the lower 48 to dig through her drawers until a few days ago.

 

So I'm not sure where this allegedly huge gap between Obama and McCain is supposed to be policy-wise, just that McCain seems to really think it's the solution and Obama thinks it's a distraction he might have to sign on to for popularity. When his sacrifice to drilling was announced, I saw progressives elsewhere going "well drilling offshore won't do much, but I'd take that any day over ANWR." I'm not sure where how their priorities put offshore drilling as 'better' than ANWR drilling, but I don't know much about the issue.

[EricMM 0]

Just look at the rhetoric gap.

 

Obama: drill if you must, if its the only way to get everything else passed, but it won't do any good...

 

McCain: Right here! Right now! Right here! Right now! Right here! Right now! (cue Fatboy Slim )

[Jobber of the Week 0]

An op-ed from, believe it or not, Murdoch's UK paper:

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/c...icle4662805.ece

 

Sarah Palin: a loveable woman, but an appalling candidate

Her zest for life gives her an appeal even to those who oppose her views. But is she really White House material?

 

Alice Miles

 

Call that a woman? A gun-toting, vehement anti-abortionist with the hide of a grizzly bear draped over her sofa, who was so aggressive on the basketball court that she was nicknamed Sarah Barracuda? She makes Barack Obama look like a girl.

 

Call her inspirational? A former winner of beauty contests and runner-up in Miss Alaska, whose kids are named after a suburb (Willow), a salmon fishery (Bristol) and a high-school track?

 

Call her a “mom”? The mother of a pregnant, unmarried 17-year-old daughter, presumably going through one of the tougher periods of her life, who decides at that point to run for president and make the teenager vulnerable to the scrutiny of the entire world? Gee, mom, thanks.

 

Yes, she is running for president, Sarah Palin. Any deputy to a 72-year-old man with four bouts of cancer behind him has to be seen as doing just that. If politics is soap opera, here is the Hollywood movie: she's tough, she's beautiful, she's a “mom”, and she's headed for the White House.

 

Mrs Palin may be a feminist (you can hear, by their silence, old leftie feminists grappling with the concept of a “Feminist for Life” anti-abortionist, the group that Mrs Palin belongs to) but there is little feminine about her. She may be the supermum who can “just put down the BlackBerry and pick up the breast pump”, as she put it - but there's nothing maternal in flinging a vulnerable teenage daughter at the flashlights of the world. It's the sort of self-interested decision a softer “mom” would not make.

 

If someone is to present womankind on the international stage, please let it not be Mrs Palin. Please not her, I think.

 

Or part of me thinks. For even as I think it, another part of me cheers.

 

There was that cool observation when her nomination was first suggested: “What is it exactly that the vice-president does all day?” There speaks, gloriously, a working mother.

 

Somewhere inside me is another person who glories in this woman. I hate her beliefs, but I love that she has the guts to hold them. I hate her campaigning against abortion, but I love her personal decision to have the baby with Down's syndrome. I hate her steering her pregnant teenage daughter on to the world stage, and apparently giving her no choice about having the child and marrying the father, but I love that thing she said after her son Trig was born with Down's: “I'm looking at him right now and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking: ‘In our world, what is normal and what is perfect?'.” (And Trig came in handy too for hiding Bristol's bump when the family posed for pictures at the announcement of Mrs Palin's run.)

 

Strange hybrid of a woman. I love her beehive hairdo and glasses, the sexy librarian look. I hate that her daughter is a cheerleader - but I love the way that Mrs Palin took John McCain shopping for a cheerleader outfit for her daughter on the day that her candidacy was announced. What zest.

 

She is such a mass of contradictions, that alone may qualify Mrs Palin as all woman after all.

 

While I revel in her as a character, an extraordinary creation scripted uniquely in the US, still I would hate to see her in the White House. And that's the problem. What Mrs Palin represents is mesmerising this side of the Atlantic for its very political incorrectness.

 

So sick are we in Britain, with our centre left-centre right politicians of the centre, not one daring to have a view out of line with the very thin consensus that passes for acceptable opinion here, that we stand stunned by a woman who opposes abortion and shoots moose; who believes in creationism and drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge; who supports the aerial shooting of wolves and opposes same-sex marriage; who says to hell with the kids and just get back to work; who even campaigned against saving polar bears!

 

Could you be less politically correct than suing the Federal Government to prevent it making polar bears an endangered species because the move would restrict oil drilling?

 

Nothing like Mrs Palin has, could ever, be seen in the British political system. She turns liberals into conservatives and conservatives into feminists. Stand back, Mr Obama, a new character is storming the ratings.

 

How Hillary Clinton, all safe lines and patronising empathy, must be hating it. How fast Michelle Obama must be recalibrating her soft little tales about baking cookies and enjoying The Brady Bunch. Mrs Palin would eat Carol Brady for breakfast, and still have space for some moose stew. Hell, yes.

 

But the Sarah Palin Story is not just a show and in America, they are equally agog but not aghast - they are adoring. The American Right loves this woman. They would have her in charge of the country.

 

Seriously. And that is where the trouble starts. A far-right fundamentalist creationist in charge of the United States? No. Not even for the fun and the glory and the sheer spectacle of it all. Not even for the joy of seeing that beehive and specs sex appeal on our television screens every day. Not even, sadly, for the triumph of seeing a woman, a working mother of young children, in the White House, magical though that would be.

 

And no, not even for the magnificent scene where Mrs Palin squares up to puny President Putin with his guns and his tiger hunts and his laughably macho outfits.

 

They call it feminism, but the Republicans have done women a disservice. They have selected a female candidate who is a cartoon - the joker in the pack who will end up just a joke.

[RonL21 0]

The real question is...

Will Palin have her hair down tonight or have it pinned up?

[Guest דניא&#15]

Eric and Jobber, you may have missed the bulletin, but try not to post full articles when a link to the article suffices.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Unca`John is PISSED.

 

He wants no more questions about the vetting process! From ANYONE! Y`hear!?

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7596225.stm

 

"This vetting controversy is a faux media scandal designed to destroy the first female Republican nominee for vice president of the United States who has never been a part of the old boys' network that has come to dominate the news establishment of this country," the statement said.

 

Mr Schmidt said there would be "no further comment about our long and thorough process" in checking Mrs Palin.

[Guest דניא&#15]

I've never heard the word "vetting" so many times in one week.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

What time have the big speeches been starting at the conventions? I want to watch tonight's impending disaster.

[At Home 0]

4AM.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

Right after the Ronco infrared rotisserie. Fuck yeah!

[Art Sandusky 0]

I want her speech to be a complete recreation of the opening scene from Patton. She'll just move her lips while George C. Scott inspires Republicans across the land to stride into the jaws of defeat with pride.

[EricMM 0]

People don't always click the links though.

 

Would bolding help?

[At Home 0]

I almost never read the articles; it's just a measure to keep things compact.

[EricMM 0]

Smaller font?

[At Home 0]

Just link them.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

(NSFW language)

 

And I'm just kind of assuming excerpts are okay from now on unless told otherwise. I mostly post articles just to highlight a few points anyway.

[EricMM 0]

this is either going to lead to paraphrasing or as Jobber said, excerpts.

 

No one clicks links.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Well, my plan is just to excerpt the piece I wanted. From looking around here, that's what people do. The "Bernanke doesn't want you to get a raise" thread, for instance, starts with a few sentences and that's it.

[Slayer 0]

People don't always click the links though.

So posting tl;dr articles in full is better?

[EricMM 0]

Fine.

[RonL21 0]

Its kind of funny how republicans/conservatives throw fits when people throw around the "hitler/nazi" references (which, sure they have a point) but they are always the quickest to turn around and scream "Commies.....Socialists" back at the left.

 

I guess that is my main gripe is it seems like the media wants to pretend this kind of name-calling started under Bush, but there was an abundance of Clinton/Commie rhetoric going on during his eight years.

 

A guy like Dennis Miller who suddenly was "born again" conservative because he said one day he was walking down the street and someone called Bush a Nazi. Yet, is he outright ignoring the same bretheren on the right would routinely call Clinton a commie, and are now calling Obama a socialist. It's kind of funny to see Dennis Miller struggle to come up with rationale for his newly found conservative "viewpoints" like he doesn't really believe half the shit he's saying, but he has to go along with it to keep his paying gig as a "Fox News Contributer" that, or he has to save face.

 

Umm...yeah I got off topic a little.

That reminds me of this:

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060582510.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

 

Could you imagine Hannity's reaction if a Liberal put Conservative and Terrorism in the same sentence?

Edited September 3, 2008 by Epic Fail Orange
Large image changed to link

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

So it turns out that Sarah Palin really wanted to ban "obscene" books from the library when she was mayor of that city. That's the type of open minded, forward thinking we need in the White House.

[Gary Floyd 0]

So it turns out that Sarah Palin really wanted to ban "obscene" books from the library when she was mayor of that city. That's the type of open minded, forward thinking we need in the White House.

What kind of "obscene" books, do tell?

 

So posting tl;dr articles in full is better?

"Yeah, that's my job!"

[Ted the Poster 0]

[Jobber of the Week 0]

That reminds me of this:

Dude, don't post full-sized images here. Just links, or thumbnails if you have to.

[Guest דניא&#15]

I'm sorry, Jobber, but if we're just going to have One Big Thread to discuss all things regarding the 2008 election, then there needs to be some housekeeping so that we're not scrolling through 50 posts a page, 37 of which are

 

Boy, THIS doesn't look good for the Republicans!

a big article from another website, which most of us will scroll past

(Facebook bumper sticker)

 

You can post full articles if you're willing to spin off new threads and stop contributing to this rolling ball of shit. Fair compromise? If you have found someone else's work which you find compelling enough to share with the community in hopes of discussing it, start a thread about it, and post it in full if you so please, along with a link to the article. If they're not important enough for new threads, just give the link and a few select lines. Semi-related note, I'm going to discuss a cap on embedded youtubes per thread in the staff folder. But yeah, give those struggling newspapers the website pageviews they need.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

^ I'm just being a cheeky goofball, dude.

 

 

Mitt Romney, tonight: "Just like you, there has never been a day when I was not proud to be an American."

 

Obama, press release: "Mitt Romney’s attack on a candidate’s wife is as pathetic as his failed presidential campaign."

[ZGangsta 0]

I'm loving how there's all these conservative commentators/pundits (who have spent years railing against political correctness, affirmative action, 'forced' equal treatment, etc) all of a sudden sobbing about sexism.

[Jobber of the Week 0]

Yeah. The Usual Gang of Neocons at somewhere else think I'm a chauvinist for calling her out as a goddamn creationist. Even though I'd do that to a man.

 

Or that I think the family is being used excessively as a prop, which I'd also do to a man.

[EricMM 0]

Don't you think that one omnibus thread is simpler than 20 different topics about various issues of this election 2008?

 

Yes?

 

No?