Here’s a Seuss-cautionary tale about McCain’s Palin pick.
Tag Archive for 'Palin'
As of the debate last night I no longer have any doubt that Barack Obama will be our next President. That the opposition only has race baiting left as a vote-getting gimmick means they know they’ve lost. McPalin is no longer fighting to win but just fighting to staunch the bleeding from its own party.
Over at the Huffington Post today, Frank Schaeffer, author of Crazy for God posted his thoughts on an Obama Presidency. It’s an eloquent missive about what kind of President we need in these times, and I hope you click through to read it in full.
Nice stories or even unparalleled courage isn’t the only point. The greater point about Obama is that the midst of our worldwide financial meltdown, an expanding (and losing) war in Afghanistan, trying to extricate our country from a wrong and stupidly mistaken ruinously expensive war in Iraq, our mounting and crushing national debt, awaiting the next (and inevitable) al Qaeda attack on our homeland, watching our schools decline to Third World levels of incompetence, facing a general loss of confidence in the government that has been exacerbated by the Republicans doing all they can to undermine our government’s capabilities and programs… President Obama will take on the leadership of our country at a make or break time of historic proportions. He faces not one but dozens of crisis, each big enough to define any presidency in better times…
Obama brings a moral clarity to his leadership reserved for those who have had to work for everything they’ve gotten and had to do twice as well as the person standing next to them because of the color of their skin. His experience of succeeding in spite of his color, social background and prejudice could have been embittering or one that fostered a spiritual rebirth of forgiveness and enlightenment. Obama radiates the calm inner peace of the spirit of forgiveness. . .
Our country has rarely faced more uncertainty. This is the time for greatness. We have a great leader. We must be a great people backing him, fighting for him, sacrificing for a cause greater than ourselves.
Last night as I wrote about recent incidents on the campaign trail, I wondered if perhaps I was over reaching in my conclusions that McCain and Palin would be complicit in any act of violence perpetrated against Obama before (or frankly, after) the election. They hear what their supporters are saying. . . . “Terrorist” . . . “Kill him!” . . . “Treason!”
Today, I’m disappointed, but not surprised, to find much of the blogosphere that I follow is writing in the same vein. McCain and Palin are essentially inciting a lynch mob by reinforcing and reiterating and emphasizing that Obama is different and Obama is the Other. They stretch weak connections to be able to say Obama is cavorting with terrorist, when McCain and Palin have more direct ties to terrorism themselves.
Baratunde Thurston of Jack & Jill politics has reached the same conclusions (emphasis mine):
But the current political environment does not excuse remaining silent when a candidate for president is referred to as a “terrorist” in your presence. A desire to win does not excuse remaining silent during a threat on the life of a U.S. Senator at one of your rallies. There are no excuses for evil such as this. John McCain and Sarah Palin, the GOP and all who support them have lost all rights to legitimate argument. They are liars. They are wrong. They are evil. Yes, evil. They are one small step short of inciting violence at their rallies. They are letting physical threats go unchallenged.
I was at Obama’s rally at Independence Square in Philadelphia back in April. When he mentioned Hillary Clinton’s name, the crowd booed, and he told them to stop. Barack Obama intervened when his supporters booed his opponent. He called for civility. Yet, when faced with supporters who label senators terrorists and call for their assassination, John McCain and Sarah Palin said nothing.
This is how evil spreads, from domestic violence to genocide. People in a position to stop it choose to do nothing.
And when zealots shouts “Terrorist” . . . “Kill him!” . . . “Treason!,” McPalin chooses to hear no evil. They refuse to draw a line in the sand for their supporters, because they’re providing the fodder that leads some unhinged individuals to those dangerous conclusions. The finish line is so close, and if they can push just a bit harder in the last lap. . .
There’s an unattributed saying, “Character is what you are in the dark.” We are seeing dark days in the month leading up to the November election. An election that is set to turn the page on 8 years of administration that daftly and proudly ushered forth America’s decline in the world and under whose watch created the perfect economic storm hailing down upon us. In November we can choose to continue the decline or begin the slow process of rebuilding our nation and its standing in the world.
UPDATE 10/10: The crowds that attend McPalin events are growing more vitriolic by the day.
The people “have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge– I mean of the character and conduct of their rulers.”
John Adams (1735-1826)
McCain and Palin are in attack mode; it’s all they have left. The coveted female and undecided voters are increasingly falling line behind Democrats and supporting Obama.
The economic meltdown is spreading overseas, leaving McCain unable to “turn the page,” since the American voters want answers not dodging of the issues.
The farce of McCain’s campaign suspension is still fresh in voters’ minds as they consider the true cost of that bail out. Sen. McCain left the trail, but left all his campaign offices open and active and left Palin to rally, to return to DC and become a leader on the bail out. And 2/3 of Republicans voted against the bill he encouraged them to support, while 2/3 of Democrats swallowed bad medicine and voted yay. The bill that ultimate passed only did so because it was gift wrapped in the kind of pork spending McCain has spent months railing against on the campaign trail. After voting for it, he encouraged Bush to veto it.
His path to the White House grows more improbable by the day. Even Karl Rove admits Obama would win in a landslide if the election were held today. On the economy, McCain has been given a failing grade by voters. Realizing the American people won’t take their insurance dollars being taxed, McCain now hopes to slash Medicaid and Medicare to pay for his health care program. (Is this new suggestion a subtle admission that McCain is pulling out of Florida as well?)
I’m reminded of that line from A Knight’s Tale when Adhemar looks down at Thatcher early in the film after besting him, saying, “You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting. In what world could you possibly beat me?”
In what world could McCain beat Obama? Based on McCain-Palin campaigning stops, they’re counting on Bridge to the Yesterday filled with Racism and Fearmongering. They seem to be taking their inspiration from Shakesville’s Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Dude Watch 2008.
In recent weeks, bloggers and journalists have interpreted what could be slight racist undertones to McCain ads, from “Advice” trying to tie Obama to non-advisor Raines to “Perverse” claiming Obama wants kindergardeners taught comprehensive sex education.
Today in New Mexico McCain asked “who is the real Barack Obama?” One member of the audience shouted “a terrorist,” much to the surprise of even McCain, who, after recovering from the surprise of that shout out, seemed quite willing to work with that conclusion as he continued speaking.
This weekend Palin pulled out the Ayers card, a link so weak it did not work when applied by Hillary Clinton, but rabid conservatives continue to shout it from the mountaintops. Ayers is an unrepentant former member of the Weather Underground (never prosecuted) and a University of Illinois professor who works on education reform. They served on the board of the same non-profit dedicated to education reform in Chicago.
“Now it turns out, one of his earliest supporters is a man named Bill Ayers,” Palin said.
“Boooo!” said the crowd.
“And, according to the New York Times, he was a domestic terrorist and part of a group that, quote, ‘launched a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and our U.S. Capitol,’” she continued.
“Boooo!” the crowd repeated.
“Kill him!” proposed one man in the audience.
Palin went on to say that . . . “I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America, as the greatest force for good in the world. I’m afraid this is someone who sees America as ‘imperfect enough’ to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country.”
McCain and Palin are now indirectly driving home the idea that Obama is different. He’s not like you and me. He hangs out with terrorists, and surprise! He’s not a white dude. Obama predicted as much. . .
“Nobody thinks that Bush and McCain have a real answer to the challenges we face. So what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said. “You know, ‘He’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name,’ you know, ‘He doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.’”
This same type of verbiage is now used full force by the McCain-Palin campaign daily. The very verbiage they decried just 2 months ago.
McCain took on the role of aggrieved victim, his campaign waiting almost a day after Obama’s remarks to charge that he had injected race into the presidential campaign. “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong,” McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said.
Yes, that same “divisive, negative, shameful and wrong” language rallies the base, and while it also reach the few left on the fence, it’s unlikely to reverse the course of this election season.
Are they prepared to face the potentially more devestating consequences of branding the opposing candidate for President as different, an outsider, a terrorist?
Jim David Adkisson told investigators all liberals should be killed and admitted he shot people Sunday morning at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church . . .
According to the affidavit requesting to search Adkisson’s home, the suspect told investigators liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country. Adkisson also blamed Democrats for the country’s decline, according to the affidavit.
A huge uproar ensued following Jenna Kern Rugile’s column, “Does shock jock hate speech lead to violence?” in which she asked where this man might have picked up his ideas.
Might the shooter have heard talk-show host Rush Limbaugh say that “liberalism is the greatest threat this country faces” and “the Islamofascists are actually campaigning for the election of Democrats” and that riots at the Democratic Convention would be “the best damn thing that can happen to this country.”
Might the shooter have heard talk-show host Sean Hannity say in 2006, “There are things in life worth fighting and dying for, and one of them is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn’t become the speaker.”
Addison owned a number of books with anti-liberal messaging written by conservative talking heads O’Reilly, Hannity, and Savage. Surely, those books influenced his mind set and actions before whatever break down lead him to enter a church hoping to go down in a blaze of gunfire?
And here is the Republican ticket campaigning by trying to tar Obama as a terrorist-friendly predator with his eye on our innocent children and our defenseless old ladies. He’s the candidate with a Muslim-sounding middle name (Hussein). He’s the candidate that’s different. These are the words the conservative base, the Republican zealots, take to heart at rally after rally.
In the event of an attempt made on Obama’s life by a wing nut spewing the same yarns told day after day by McCain, Palin, and their surrogates, would they own up to their contribution in riling up a criminal? Me thinks not.
You saw that OMG moment for McCain in New Mexico, when he realized how extreme some of his supporters are in their blind hatred of Obama. It’s as though he just realized that the friendly, de-regulation loving Republican isn’t the only one writing checks to the McCain campaign.
Back in May, Cindy McCain swore her husband would run a clean campaign.
Mrs. McCain said that the upcoming campaign against either Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton would not engage in negative tactics.
“We’d rather not win than to have to do that,” Mrs. McCain said. “That’s not worth winning for. This is about being a leader and a person that can be a good example for our children, and a good role model. There’s many, many, many more things to this job than just being the president. You are an example. You have to — you have to be better than that. You have to be.”
Sen. McCain also repeatedly called for clean campaigning.
What a difference a few months and the unbridled hunger for power make. The campaign’s embrace of the rankest of muck and insinuation speaks volumes about the campaign’s leadership and the character of its candidates. They now stir the same kettle that the Limbaughs and Hannities of this country toil over.
At what price an American presidency?
UPDATE: For my follow up post, see McCain and Palin fueling the fires.
UPDATE 10/8: At McPalin rally today: “Off with his head.”
UPDATE 10/10: Video of Obama’s prediction in July that the current GOP tactics were inevitable
At her first town hall meeting, Palin invited voters in attendance to play “stump the candidate.”
Asked about her credentials, she said skeptics are free to quiz her.
“If you want specifics with specific policies or countries go ahead and you can ask me. You can even play stump-the-candidate if you want to,” she said Wednesday evening.
Last weekend, a voter took the opportunity to ask Palin about how she would address the “Pakistant situation.” CBS reported the exchange, and here’s the salient bit.
“So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?” Rovito asked.
“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.
The conversation probably annoyed McCain to put it mildly because he had just put the screws to McCain for a similar stance in a debate several nights early.
In a follow up interview with Katie Couric, the Dynamic Duo cite that exchange as an example of “gotcha journalism.” (emphasis mine)
John McCain: Of course not. But, look, I understand this day and age of “gotcha” journalism. Is that a pizza place? In a conversation with someone who you didn’t hear … the question very well, you don’t know the context of the conversation, grab a phrase. Gov. Palin and I agree that you don’t announce that you’re going to attack another country …
Couric: It wasn’t a “gotcha.” She was talking to a voter.
McCain: No, she was in a conversation with a group of people and talking back and forth. And … I’ll let Gov. Palin speak for herself.
Palin: Well, it … in fact, you’re absolutely right on. In the context, this was a voter, a constituent, hollering out a question from across an area asking, “What are you gonna do about Pakistan? You better have an answer to Pakistan.” I said we’re gonna do what we have to do to protect the United States of America. . .
Couric: What did you learn from that experience?
Palin: That this is all about “gotcha” journalism. A lot of it is. But that’s okay, too.
So now when voters ask policy questions of candidates, it’s because they’re trying to trip the candidate up, not go on fact finding missions to determine who they want to vote for. Since this election is supposed to be about issues, you’d think the candidates would welcome inquiries about their stances on a variety of domestic and foreign policy platforms.
You’d think a candidate would be especially welcoming of those questions after encouraging voters to play “stump the candidate.” Yet, she’s done her darnedest to avoid answering questions in a free-flowing format so that voters can get to know her.
I guess Palin made a rhetorical, rather than literal, invitation at her first town hall event with McCain.
I love this video. The celebrities aren’t taking a stance on any issue in particular. Instead, they press the importance of voting, period.
A bunch of celebrities are demanding that you don’t vote because voting is stupid. No one cares about education, health care, abortion, polar bears, the economy, etc.
But then celebrity after celebrity point out that what you care about might matter. From social security to Darfur to the AIDS crisis at home and abroad, the 2nd ammendment, war on drugs. “This is really only about your future.”
They remind you that you need to REGISTER to vote and insist they’ll wait for you to register before moving on.
It’s completely non-partisan, but it reminds people of the issues at stake (regardless of the position you take on those issues), the need to register (the deadline is October 4th in some states) and the necessity of voting.
And of course, they ask you to take the message viral and share it with 5 friends.
PS. Maybe it leans left. But much of Hollywood is pretty liberal. The point is non partisan — vote!
I’ve tried. Repeatedly. I even went out to dinner with a Republican to attempt to make sense of the conclusion so many McCain-Palin voters have reached — Sarah Palin is a great choice for VP.
I’ll be the first to say that I wish I had her schmoozing skills. Palin has a way of gift wrapping words that drives the Republican base wild. She’s that colleague at work that you love going for drinks with because she tells the funny stories and relates to everyone at the office. She’s the big sister you want to confide in. I could look past her political orientation and be frenemies with Sarah Palin. Yes, frenemies. Because I have no doubt she’d stab me in the back, and the front, if I stood in the way of an opportunity she wanted to pursue.
But being personable is not a qualification for being Vice-President; it’s a qualification for getting invited to a hot-ticket dinner party. And it’s incredibly short sighted of voters to want the “girl next door” to reside a seventy-two year-old’s heart beat away from the Presidency.
Sure. She’s just like you and me. A mid-September poll by the NYTimes and CBS found that “77% of Republicans said they had a favorable view of Palin.” The adjectives brought to mind by Palin:
But when asked what specifically they liked about her, their top five reasons were that she was honest, tough, caring, outspoken and fresh-faced. . . (By the way, her intelligence was in a three-way tie for eighth place, right behind “I just like her.”)
So you need to ask yourself, are YOU qualified to be Vice-President? Would you be comfortable being thrown on a national stage handling the Wall Street melt down with the leader of your political party? Or the next terrorist attack by foreigners (since we like to avoid labeling the home grown variety as such)? How would you make health care affordable for uninsured, high risk Americans?
If you possess or are working towards a degree in political science, economics, public diplomacy, international relations or history, you are over qualified and exempt from this line of questioning. You know way more than the average American about internal and external forces and policies that shape the current political and financial climate of America to answer.
I suspect most Americans would not want to shoulder the burden of a national economic crisis, let alone be determine the best course of action from the myriad he or she is offered. Surely, you don’t want the girl next door, who cruised through 5 schools in 6 years (more evidence of her short attenton span?) before graduating with a degree in journalism influencing those executive decisions. The clean up of 8 years of a Bush administration in charge is not the job of light weights or those who agreed with Bush 90% of the time
Jay of Ill Doctrine shares his take on what voter need to do in light of the current economic crisis sucking up Wall Street, with Main Street already stunted.
That feeling that you’re feeling right now, hoping and praying that you leaders are actually smarter than you. Please remember that feeling when you go in the voting booth. Because just this once, I think we really need to vote for the annoying smart guy.
I know how you feel. He’s always got this smug look on his face, and it brings up all our esteem issues from high school, but we need him right now. As soon as this crisis is over, we can give him a wedgie and lock him inside his locker. But this is his moment.
I know this is not an easy choice. But this moment in history is a time for courage. It is a time for change. It is time for a nerd we can believe in.
Out of all the people I know, I can think of one person, I’d trust to make hard decisions with global ripples. And he’s not the guy next door. He’s an arrogant know-it-all that has spent years reading up on economics and politics, both domestic and foreign. He makes me feel really dumb a lot, but I keep going back for more because he inspires me to be better. He’s a cut above the rest, and it’s that quality I want in the leadership that represents my country. It’s a quality that’s sorely missing from both halves of the Republican ticket.
Exactly what I’ve been thinking for about a week now.
From Salon.com Rebecca Traister’s “The Sarah Palin Pity Party“:
When you stage a train wreck of this magnitude — trying to pass one underqualified chick off as another highly qualified chick with the lame hope that no one will notice — well, then, I don’t feel bad for you. . .
When you don’t take your own career and reputation seriously enough to pause before striding onto a national stage and lying about your record of opposing a Bridge to Nowhere or using your special-needs child to garner the support of Americans in need of healthcare reform you don’t support, I don’t feel bad for you.
When you don’t have enough regard for your country or its politics to cram effectively for the test — a test that helps determine whether or not you get to run that country and participate in its politics — I don’t feel bad for you.
When your project is reliant on gaining the support of women whose reproductive rights you would limit, whose access to birth control and sex education you would curtail, whose healthcare options you would decrease, whose civil liberties you would take away and whose children and husbands and brothers (and sisters and daughters and friends) you would send to war in Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Russia and wherever else you saw fit without actually understanding international relations, I don’t feel bad for you. . .
In fact, the only people I feel sorry for are Americans who invested in a hopeful, progressive vision of female leadership, but who are now stuck watching, verbatim, a “Saturday Night Live” skit.
There’s something about an election year that brings out the audacity of politicians to utter what they’re really thinking sans filter. After the recently volley of pundits and candidates and administration officials releasing utterly absurd sound bites, I’ve concluded our political leaderships thinks we’re stupid.
Last month, John Goodman (who helped develop McCain’s health care policy plans) commented on an easy, cost-free solution to the problem of lack of insurance nationwide
‘So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,’ Mr. Goodman said. ‘The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.
‘So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.’
Semantics could reframe the debate on health care policy if the government only had to concern itself with citizens that are denied needed care. Under such terminology, the availability of acute, rather than preventative care would matter most.
Unfortunately for Goodman, the quality, equity, and accessability of emergency care is under fire in this country with growing waits, staff shortages and emergency room closings. But changing the language would make the numbers more palatable.
Next, Americans are angry that Congress is set to hand over $700+ billion to Wall Street after it bungled its business. 55% of Americans are against such a bail out. Last week, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson released his proposed bail out of the Wall Street wunderkind, just 2 1/2 pages in length, which included a statement that would elevate him to a status beyond American law or scrutiny.
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Today, testifying before the Senate banking committee Paulson defended the statement saying it would have been “presumptuous” of him to define what sort of oversight this proposal needed if activated.
We gave you a simple, three-page legislative outline and I thought it would have been presumptuous for us on that outline to come up with an oversight mechanism. That’s the role of Congress, that’s something we’re going to work on together. So if any of you felt that I didn’t believe that we needed oversight: I believe we need oversight. We need oversight.
So writing in a clause allowing you to act with impunity, answering to no one, that’s just plain humble? Really? Did the Bush administration think Congress was just going to push their legislation on through, while handing over the keys to the kingdom? Americans have dealt with 8 years of an administration ignoring the law, so giving any one individual a free pass would be insane. I guess the Bush administration hoped the $700 billion figure would shock and awe us so, that we’d turn a blind eye to the assault on the Constitution.
My personal favorite, though, is the the McCain campaign’s categorical refusal to allow Palin to speak unscripted in live interview formats that would allow American voters the opportunity to hear her speak about her opinions on the issues. Today, Palin met with a variety of world leaders, but the pool cameras were only allowed to film about 30 SECONDS of a handful of those meetings. Originally, journalists were refused all access. Those 30 seconds were granted only after news outlets threatened to not cover Palin’s activities at all.
Since being announced as the VP candidate by McCain, Sarah Palin has sat for 2 interviews — one with Charlie Gibson of ABC, the other with Sean Hannity of Fox News. A CBS reporter assigned to Biden estimates that he’s completed more than 80 interviews since Obama announced his running mate.
This refusal to let her speak for herself has to make you wonder, what are they hiding? The hiding isn’t helping the McCain campaign; Palin’s approval ratings have dropped 12 points in two weeks among independents. Andrea Mitchell and Rachel Maddow discussed this tactic, likening it to how totalitarian regimes in other parts of the world treat the media. That Palin remains inaccessible, unwilling to discuss her positions, which are often out of touch with mainstream America, can’t be helping her approval ratings. . . It’s, dare I say, elitist, to think that a viable candidate would and could deny the public access to a thorough vetting of her ideology.
Deservingly, Campbell Brown called for the McCain campaign to “Free Sarah Palin!,” not just because voters have a right to get to know her before casting a ballot, but because it’s sexist to hide her away as if she can’t fend for herself. The McCain campaign and its surrogates have been slapping “sexist” stickers on their opponents and media channels, anyone who dares criticize Palin. It’s the ultimate act of hypocrisy that they’re sheltering “the girl” from the rough and tumble vetting McCain, Obama, and Biden survived on the campaign trail.
More so than any other election in recent memory, Americans are paying attention. It means that the blogosphere rumbles, the main stream media eventually gets around to reporting, and American households are discussing the antics of the power class in America.
When looking at the kind of sound bites and stories covered in the media, you can’t help but notice that the power elite doesn’t have a very high regard for the people that put them there.
Sarah Haskins’s latest piece on marketing to women. Her focus: Sarah Palin and the 2008 election.
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