War for Ukraine Day 1,546: The Cost
14 hours ago
Showing posts with label Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sarah Palin. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Why Exposing Sarah Palin Still Matters
The Daily Dish has a must-read new article on why exposing the Sarah Palin insanity still matters:
Let's be real in a way the national media seems incapable of: this person should never have been placed on a national ticket in a mature democracy. She was incapable of running a town in Alaska competently. The impulsive, unvetted selection of a total unknown, with no knowledge of or interest in the wider world, as a replacement president remains one of the most disturbing events in modern American history. That the press felt required to maintain a facade of normalcy for two months - and not to declare the whole thing a farce from start to finish - is a sign of their total loss of nerve. That the Palin absurdity should follow the two-term presidency of another individual utterly out of his depth in national government is particularly troubling. 46 percent of Americans voted for the possibility of this blank slate as president because she somehow echoed their own sense of religious or cultural "identity". Until we figure out how this happened, we will not be able to prevent it from happening again. And we have to find a way to prevent this from recurring. She is a dangerous, unqualified know-nothing who very nearly became the replacement for the most powerful person on earth.
Sarah Palin is Sanjayah
I couldn't have said it better myself:
Sarah Palin is like that crazy relative who comes over and doesn't want to leave. She just seemingly does not want to leave the limelight. You know, maybe a better way to put it, one of my friends said, 'You know, she's like Sanjayah from American Idol. When is the fifteen minutes gonna be up?'
Monday, November 3, 2008
Quote of the Day: Explaining Obamacons
A reader at the Daily Dish has a perfect encapsulation of why I consider myself an Obamacon (well, maybe an Obamatarian):
I was with a woman this week who is in her sixties. She told me that she has voted Republican her entire life and this year she is voting for Obama. Her reason; John McCain is too erratic and too much of a hot head and Sarah Palin is completely unqualified. I think many "Obamacons" simply love this country more than they do their ideology.
Friday, October 31, 2008
McCain Surrogate Eagleburger: Palin Not Ready
This from McCain supporter Lawrence Eagleburger:
A former Republican Secretary of State and one of John McCain's most prominent supporters offered a stunningly frank and remarkably bleak assessment of Sarah Palin's capacity to handle the presidency should such a scenario arise.
Lawrence Eagleburger, who served as Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush and whose endorsement is often trumpeted by McCain, said on Thursday that the Alaska governor is not only unprepared to take over the job on a moment's notice but, even after some time in office, would only amount to an "adequate" commander in chief.
"And I devoutly hope that [she] would never be tested," he added for good measure -- referring both to Palin's policy dexterity and the idea of McCain not making it through his time in office.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Quote of the Week: Hitchens of Palin
In this quote, you'll find out why I (sometimes sheepishly) love Christopher Hitchens:
[The Republican Party] has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies.
On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.
Snap!
Palin: 'Share the Wealth' by Taxing Oil Companies
I'll wade into the McCain/Palin "Socialism! (Be Afraid!)" silliness for a moment by pointing out an interesting bit of irony hypocrisy uttered by $150,000 Caribou Barbie (TM) the Very Serious Republican Vice President Nominee Sarah Palin back in Alaska:
Just last month, in an interview with Philip Gourevitch of the New Yorker, Palin explained the windfall profits tax that she imposed on the oil industry in Alaska as a mechanism for ensuring that Alaskans "share in the wealth" generated by oil companies. [...]
In fact, Alaska's Clear and Equitable Share (ACES) program, which manages the redistribution of oil wealth in Alaska, brings in so much money that the state needs no income or sales tax. In addition, this year ACES will provide every Alaskan with a check for an estimated $3,200.
As Hendrick Hertzberg notes, "Perhaps there is some meaningful distinction between spreading the wealth and sharing it ... but finding it would require the analytic skills of Karl the Marxist."
Sen. Chuck Hagel Rips into Sarah Palin
Hagel may be the only senior Republican elected official who has publicly criticized McCain’s choice of Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. “I don’t believe she’s qualified to be President of the United States,” Hagel told me. “The first judgment a potential President makes is who their running mate is—and I don’t think John made a very good selection.” He scoffed at McCain’s attempts to portray her as an experienced politician. “To try to make the excuse that she looks out her window and sees Russia—and that she’s commander of the Alaska National Guard.” He added, “There is no question that this candidate is arguably the thinnest-résumé candidate for Vice-President in the history of America.”
Palin Unqualified? Blame McCain's Judgment
When we I correctly criticize Sarah Palin for being an unprepared, bumbling buffoon, what I think can get lost in the weeds is the key concern that this should raise in people's minds.
It is not enough to dismiss Palin as an ineducable wingnut with zero understanding of serious domestic or foreign policy as many in McCain campaign and Republican Party are doing right now; e.g.:
"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."
Get beyond the immediate travesty that Sarah Palin embodies -- seriously ponder what this says about McCain's poor judgment in picking her as his running mate without doing any serious vetting.
As Steve Benen puts it:
[I]f Palin was hopelessly ignorant and unable to learn the basics, why on earth did McCain pick her? If the McCain/Bush aides hope to gain an edge by preemptively blaming Palin for a defeat, it doesn't exactly clear their boss -- McCain chose Palin to be one 72-year-old heartbeat from the presidency. If she's the disaster who gets the blame, it's still McCain who bears responsibility for the fiasco.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Republican Circular Firing Squad on Larry King
My mom pointed out this episode of Larry King Live. Watch and witness what is happening in the Republican party. Christopher Hitchens is priceless:
Anchorage Daily News Endorses Obama
The Alaska newspaper of record, the Anchorage Daily News, endorsed Obama for President:
Sen. McCain describes himself as a maverick, by which he seems to mean that he spent 25 years trying unsuccessfully to persuade his own party to follow his bipartisan, centrist lead. Sadly, maverick John McCain didn't show up for the campaign. Instead we have candidate McCain, who embraces the extreme Republican orthodoxy he once resisted and cynically asks Americans to buy for another four years.
It is Sen. Obama who truly promises fundamental change in Washington. You need look no further than the guilt-by-association lies and sound-bite distortions of the degenerating McCain campaign to see how readily he embraces the divisive, fear-mongering tactics of Karl Rove. And while Sen. McCain points to the fragile success of the troop surge in stabilizing conditions in Iraq, it is also plain that he was fundamentally wrong about the more crucial early decisions. Contrary to his assurances, we were not greeted as liberators; it was not a short, easy war; and Americans -- not Iraqi oil -- have had to pay for it. It was Sen. Obama who more clearly saw the danger ahead.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Schwarzenegger: Sarah Palin Isn't Qualified
In an interview with CNN's Campbell Brown, California Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger revealed that he doesn't think Sarah Palin is qualified to be President... yet (?):
BROWN: Do you think [Palin is] qualified to be president?
SCHWARZENEGGER: I think that she will get to be qualified.
BROWN: She will get there? What do you mean? She's not ready yet?
SCHWARZENEGGER: By the time that she is sworn in I think she will be ready.
Quote of the Day
"New ad slogan: 'Clothes for Gov. Palin? $150,000. Time machine to go back two months to late August and ask what the Hell were Schmidt and Davis thinking when they cooked up this idea and sold it to McCain? Priceless.'" -- Republican Mike Murphy, who once ran the campaign of McCain 1.0
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Palin Spending Spree is Illegal
Leaving aside the sheer boneheadedness of the politics of spending $150,000 on Sarah Palin's wardrobe, makeup and hairdos (which is more than what most people in the country spend on clothes in 80 years) during a financial crisis when people are struggling to pay their bills, let's focus on the fact that this is illegal.
Let's examine the McCain-Feingold Campaign Reform Act of 2002:
SEC. 313. USE OF CONTRIBUTED AMOUNTS FOR CERTAIN PURPOSES.
(a) PERMITTED USES- ...(b) PROHIBITED USE-
(1) IN GENERAL- A contribution or donation described in subsection (a) shall not be converted by any person to personal use.(2) CONVERSION- For the purposes of paragraph (1), a contribution or donation shall be considered to be converted to personal use if the contribution or amount is used to fulfill any commitment, obligation, or expense of a person that would exist irrespective of the candidate's election campaign or individual's duties as a holder of Federal office, including--
(A) a home mortgage, rent, or utility payment;(B) a clothing purchase;(C) a noncampaign-related automobile expense;(D) a country club membership;(E) a vacation or other noncampaign-related trip;(F) a household food item;(G) a tuition payment;(H) admission to a sporting event, concert, theater, or other form of entertainment not associated with an election campaign; and(I) dues, fees, and other payments to a health club or recreational facility.'
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Poll: Palin is #1 Negative Concern About McCain
What do voters worry about when they think of John McCain? His age? His temperament? His similarities to George Bush?
A new NBC News poll reveals that most voters' top negative concern about McCain is Sarah Palin. Oh, sweet, sweet, justice:
Palin’s qualifications to be president rank as voters’ top concern about McCain’s candidacy - ahead of continuing President Bush’s policies, enacting economic policies that only benefit the rich and keeping too high of a troop presence in Iraq.
As Andrew Sullivan puts it:
Yes, 34 percent rank Palin as their major issue with McCain, above the 23 percent who are concerned that McCain will be a third term for Bush and the 20 percent who don't like his economic policies.
Poll: Palin is Worst VP Pick Ever
An interesting number hidden in a new New York Times poll:
Mr. Obama’s favorability is the highest for a presidential candidate running for a first term in the last 28 years of Times/CBS polls. Mrs. Palin’s negative rating is the highest for a vice-presidential candidate as measured by The Times and CBS News. Even Dan Quayle, with whom Mrs. Palin is often compared because of her age and inexperience on the national scene, was not viewed as negatively in the 1988 campaign.
Mitt Romney Unsure If Sarah Palin is Qualified
Oops, Mormo-robotron 2000 Mitt Romney got caught in a brain freeze recently when asked whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be President:
When asked by host Wolf Blitzer whether she is “ready to be President,” Romney hesitated and offered this stuttering response: "Well, that — that’s something which I — I believe the American people will, uh, assess individually and say, uh, yeah, she’s got the kind of executive experience that you’d hope to find from a person who’s been a governor and a mayor."
Olbermann Special Comment: Pro- and Anti-America
I watched this Keith Olbermann Special Comment last night and it was spot-on. He rails against recent comments by Sarah Palin, nutjob Minnesota Republican Representative Michelle Bachmann and McCain hack surrogate Nancy Pfotenhauer to the effect that the areas of the country that support McCain and the Republicans are "pro-America" and the "real America", while areas and people that support Obama are "anti-America":
Palin as President
Check out the site PalinAsPresident.us.
The site envisions what Sarah Palin's oval office would look like -- with audio!
Click on all the items to hear her take on topics and issues of the day. I especially like the audio for the empty diploma frames: "Learnin's HARD!"
Ha!
Monday, October 20, 2008
Conservative Ken Adelman Endorses Obama
Conservative foreign policy hawk Ken Adelman joins the ranks of the Obamacons.
A brief bio from the New Yorker:
Ken Adelman is a lifelong conservative Republican. Campaigned for Goldwater, was hired by Rumsfeld at the Office of Economic Opportunity under Nixon, was assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld under Ford, served as Reagan’s director of arms control, and joined the Defense Policy Board for Rumsfeld’s second go-round at the Pentagon, in 2001. Adelman’s friendship with Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their wives goes back to the sixties, and he introduced Cheney to Paul Wolfowitz at a Washington brunch the day Reagan was sworn in.
In recent years, Adelman and his friends Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz fell out over his criticisms of the botching of the Iraq War. Still, he remains a bona-fide hawk (“not really a neo-con but a con-con”) who has never supported a Democrat for President in his life.
Here's an excerpt from his endorsement:
Why so, since my views align a lot more with McCain’s than with Obama’s? And since I truly dread the notion of a Democratic president, Democratic House, and hugely Democratic Senate?
Primarily for two reasons, those of temperament and of judgment.
When the economic crisis broke, I found John McCain bouncing all over the place. In those first few crisis days, he was impetuous, inconsistent, and imprudent; ending up just plain weird. Having worked with Ronald Reagan for seven years, and been with him in his critical three summits with Gorbachev, I’ve concluded that that’s no way a president can act under pressure.
Second is judgment. The most important decision John McCain made in his long campaign was deciding on a running mate.
That decision showed appalling lack of judgment. Not only is Sarah Palin not close to being acceptable in high office—I would not have hired her for even a mid-level post in the arms-control agency. But that selection contradicted McCain’s main two, and best two, themes for his campaign—Country First, and experience counts. Neither can he credibly claim, post-Palin pick.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
