Every time she ascends a podium to read the web of lies and misleading statements off the teleprompter…
Ha, ha! I said Thanks but no thanks! wink
I saw a human footprint in a dinosaur fossil! wink
No earmarks! wink
Reform! wink
I’m a maverick! wink
In what respect, Charlie? wink
I did not blink. I winked.
I wonder if she’s going to wink at Henry “coup d’état” Kissinger.
A subject I’ve largely avoided.
I was reading what David Foster Wallace had written in Rolling Stone about John McCain in 2000, and he seems to have had a pretty good opinion of the man as a man. A lot of people whose judgment I respect have made similar comments about having respect for McCain. Watching him in interviews of late, though, it sometimes seems as though he has finally sold his soul to the devil/RNC, has stopped bothering to try to sound fair or honest, and is simply going to do whatever is necessary to get into that office. Notably, he lied in his teeth on The View (which isn’t something that I normally watch, but they have a pretty big audience, I think) about the veracity of some of his negative advertising about Obama. Karl Rove, of all unexpected people, has stated that he’s gone too far.
It’s really strange to me how people will vote how they’ve always voted, and see just what they want to see, and hear just what they want to hear…issues, smissues: tell me whether or not you’re a dirty LIBERAL, that will decide whether or not I’m voting for you. (I’m sure there are people on the other side who vote party even when their candidate kinda sucks…in Canada, you get used to that, because if you let the other guys in, Bad Things can happen.)
I desperately hope that the numbers of new voters, both the young and the never-bothered-before, that Obama has energized and motivated to vote, will be enough to get someone who doesn’t terrify me into the Oval, for a change.
First in-depth article by the NYT.
Thank you. Now my visceral mistrust has some concrete reasons to latch on to.
I have had a couple of hmmmm moments today, or of late.
Saw some of the John McCain bio on CNN, largely softball, although it made several unflattering points. What creeped me out the most, though (OH and creep/creepy/creeped are the words of the week), was when Jon King asked McCain about the breakdown of his first marriage (he cheated on his first wife with the current Mrs McCain, if somehow you didn’t know this). He said “I accept full responsibility for the breakdown of my marriage” or words to that effect, full responsibility in any case. Then he smiled. And it was the creepiest thing! teeth and everything! Gave me chills.
(Also, I don’t think I will ever get used to the way that Republicans are allowed to break any code, any law, lie, cheat, steal, drive drunk, frolic with hookers and blow, you NAME it, and all they have to do is “accept responsibility,” appear suitably contrite, mention God a few times, and they are off the hook. Democrats do half of that stuff and they are unsuitable to lead this great nation (that great nation–you know what I mean). How does that work, exactly? I don’t know that I will ever understand.)
There’s another Palin family rumour out there, which is inserting a Palin child into what is patently a true news story. I don’t know that the child belongs there, but it’s certainly plausible, and there are some respectable people out there who seem to think it’s true. If it is, then no doubt the liberal elitist news media who are currently swarming all over Alaska should be able to verify it, and it will be another big fat question mark about the VP candidate, whose mothering skills are supposed to be such a big chunk of her “qualifications.” I don’t envy those kids, and if fate sends them to Washington, I really won’t envy them. The Obama girls seem to be pretty non-controversial, and the Biden kids are all grown, aren’t they? The McCain kids I don’t know a thing about, but I guess since nobody else is running as a hockey/soccer/basketball/ballet/whatever mom/dad, their kids don’t invite as much interest. Also the other campaign kids haven’t been thrust so often before the cameras, that I’ve seen. Or maybe it’s the Palin kids’ names that makes everyone want to know about them. I don’t know.
Also, Canada is having an election! it will all be over three weeks before the US one. Ha!
It’s all making me go hmmmm, though.
Mud mud mud. Fake mud, since there isn’t a lot of real mud to throw around. Lies.
Shrill. Yes, I agree. It’s an unfortunate physiological fact that Gov. Palin has a nasal and shrill speaking voice. Edie McClurg redux. I wonder if that’s why she didn’t make it as a newscaster? Her voice is even more grating to my ear than Sen. Clinton’s, and that’s saying something. (OH MY GAWD, listening some more, her voice is terrible! and the snark isn’t going to play well to anyone but the adoring, rigid conservatives, I don’t think. It’s not becoming.)
Lies, off the bat. Lies about Obama’s tax plans, energy plans, record. Just because you say it, doesn’t make it so.
This elite-bashing!! Hey why would you want to elect the people who excelled at learning at tough schools? Let’s elect the people who went to third-tier schools, or who came almost at the bottom of their class at a really good school (oh, and he was a Legacy, too).
What is wrong with being elite? isn’t it better than being ordinary? what’s the opposite of elite? low, ordinary, common. Homespun? nothing wrong with homespun. In being a proponent of elitism, which I am, I am espousing excellence. I believe in competence and I believe in excellence. Which isn’t any kind of put down of class or anything else except willful ignorance. I don’t champion the lowest common denominator. I greatly prefer to be the best, rather than the worst.
I wonder, by the by, if she got a fair price on that “luxury jet” on eBay to repay the people of Alaska? and is she planning on eschewing Cindy McCain’s luxury jet whilst campaigning?
MY UNMARRIED TEENAGE PREGNANT DAUGHTER! LET ME SHOW YOU HER! OH HERE’S HER BABY DAD–BOYF–FIANCÉ! LET ME SHOW YOU HIM! OH WAIT NO DON’T TALK ABOUT HER YOU L33T MEANIES! (nice to see that she or her people reads the criticism: she finally held her “4-month old Down syndrome child” publicly. The one whose life she horrifyingly risked by flying home to Alaska from Texas after her water broke. There’re some Family Values for ya!)
And hey, Rudi, when is the last time a Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate had a 4-month old “special needs” infant at home? it may be an unfair charge, but it’s unprecedented, and I think it’s a fair question. Maybe Todd is really great at infant care. Well then, tell us so. The fact is that in 99.99999% of cases, an infant’s mother, not father, tends to it for the first 6 months or a year. Well, at least in civilized countries that have parental leave.
And “Hottest VP”? that’s right, that gal’s a real firecracker, isn’t she?
Jeeeebus. Who’s sexist, again?
…that a country which prides itself on having some of the greatest educational institutions in the world, whose universities are a magnet for the best and brightest all over the planet, takes such perverse pleasure in nominating (and sometimes electing) the underachievers?
Barack Obama: educated at “Tier 1″ schools all the way: Occidental; transferred to get his undergrad in Political Science/International Relations specialization at Columbia; took time off to work and do that community organizing; and then back to school to Harvard, getting his JD magna cum laude after being editor of the Law Review. That’s about as good an education as a person can get in the United States.
Joe Biden: also “Tier 1″ schools: undergrad in History/Political Science double major at University of Delaware, and JD from Syracuse University.
John McCain: US Naval Academy, an excellent school. However, Sen. McCain supposedly graduated 894 out of a class of 899, so…perhaps not one of the Academy’s shining stars.
Sarah Palin: Tier…3. Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, Political Science minor. University of Idaho.
George W. Bush, of course, was Ivy all the way, Andover, Yale…but his SATs were lower than mine (and I studied a grand total of three days, suck at math, and took no PSAT), and the scuttlebutt has always been that he was a poor student, and would not have been admitted, let alone graduated, were he not a Legacy.
The thing I’ve noticed about 95% of the pundits in my relatively-infrequent bouts of CNN-watching is that they listen to each other to a point, but don’t tend to actually answer the given question or respond to the point made, they’re always off getting in their next zinger or talking point. They’re so busy rejecting each others’ hypotheses that they can’t actually have a dialogue within most people’s understanding of that word.
So I guess it brands me a liberal (which I’m OK with), but I tend to believe the New York Times‘ reportage more than random partisan talking heads on TV. And last night was very frustrating for me, because I’d read several articles (starting with wiki, and then NYT, Reuters, AP) about the GOP Veep pick, trying to get a handle on her. Saw parts of her acceptance speech and clips of her from the past. And when that blonde republican pollster woman on Larry King last night started going on about her “vast executive experience,” I had to laugh. Her vast executive experience, which is more than Obama’s, according to the pollster, consists of being Mayor of a 6,000 to 7,000 inhabitant town. After having been a city councillor. And then she’s had less than two years as Governor. She has vast experience, yes, of overseeing a 25-member police force, which she sought to enlarge. That ought to serve her really really well if she ever has to run a country of 300-odd millions, with armed forces of about 3 million, active and reserve. (A 25-member police force makes me think of Knighthood! Tcha! I have more vassals than that, lady!)
Madam Governor is vaunted as a champion of anti-pork barrel politics, and the shining jewel in her anti-pork crown is that she voted against the “Bridge to Nowhere.” What her Republican proponents are not so quick to tell you is that she voted against the Bridge to Nowhere after she spent several years (including those executive experience years!) lobbying for it. How I wished that Paul Begala and James Carville knew about that yesterday. Carville could have used a solid rebuttal point, he was babbling incoherently in his astonishment, and too polite to talk over the woman who kept interrupting him.
We women are supposed to be ecstatic and vote for her because she has a vagina. Newsflash: I wouldn’t have voted for Hillary’s vagina, and I wouldn’t vote for this one’s either. I’m not going to vote for someone simply because of their gender, and I’m hardly alone in that.
Vice Presidents are often tapped to travel internationally to pay visits to heads of state, attend functions, and such. Gov. Palin, who is two and a half years my senior, applied for a passport in 2007. Last year.
She’s so folksy that she says she works “real hard.” Really is an adverb, madam, don’t you remember the ABC School of Rock about adverbs? they get an LY stuck on the end. I hate bad grammar for the sake of it. Although I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than simply not knowing.
When she was runner up to Miss Alaska in 1984, she won Miss Congeniality. How nice. Has a BA in journalism from the University of Idaho. Ah.
She’s a hardcore conservative. She fundraised for Pat Buchanan’s presidential run. He, in return, calls her a “gal,” which was the first thing I saw coming. She thinks “intelligent design” should be taught in school. I think “intelligent design,” also known as “Creationism,” oughtn’t to be taught outside of catechism or whatever the Fundies call it. Church is where church beliefs belong; school is where science belongs.
She’s a “feminist” of the type that believes that abortion is wrong under any circumstances. Which obviously endears her to the conservatives. And, you know, feminism is what you make it, but I don’t know too many people who call themselves feminists who think that Roe v. Wade is a bad idea.
What’s funny is that while Obama said in his acceptance speech that “I am my brother’s keeper,” he didn’t say that he had to agree with everything his brother thought, or make his brother do or not do anything.
She thinks the polar bears are swimming for fun.
She wants to drill the shit out of Alaska and extract every bit of natural resource it has, I guess profit is the only thing that matters.
In any case, this choice was so off the wall that it has occurred to me that it’s a what do you call it, a trial balloon that is so outrageous that the real choice, to be revealed during the convention, will seem rational and logical. That’s my plotline imagination working though.
If McCain were 20 years younger, it wouldn’t be nearly the big deal that it is. I’m sure she’s a very capable woman, and she’s clearly quite opinionated and persuasive, as well as being a darling of a lot of conservatives who were not really big fans of Sen. McCain. But at his age, and with his previous health problems, she is pretty far from someone that I think the majority of Americans, let alone all the rest of us out here, would want to see in the Oval on a permanent basis.
Is that short for Trigonometry? Triglycerides? Trigger? (and if so, the gun or the horse?)
First son is named Track? Bristol (Raceway? presumably not intended as a reference to the British slang for, um, breasts), Willow, and (Rowdy Roddy? OK, probably not) Piper are the girls.
Interesting. Incomprehensible to me so far, but interesting. O_o
