Politics
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- hallelujah0
"When the Times convened the focus group of 11 undecided Florida voters five weeks ago--four Republicans, five Democrats, and two registered to no party--it noted that their "strong distrust" of Barack Obama suggested it was a group ripe for John McCain to win over.
Not anymore. The group has swung dramatically, if unenthusiastically, toward Democrat Obama. Most of them this week cited the same reason: Sarah Palin.
"The one thing that frightens me more than anything else are the ideologues. We've seen too many," said 80-year-old Air Force veteran Donn Spegal, a lifelong Republican from St. Petersburg, who sees McCain's new running mate as the kind of "wedge issue" social conservative that has made him disenchanted with his party.
Hmmm. OK, so Palin's far-right social views turn off more moderate Republicans. Who would've thunk it? But what about women? Surely undecided women are flocking to her, aren't they?
"I'm truly offended by Palin,'' said 37-year-old Republican Philinia Lehr of Largo, a full-time mother with a nursing degree who voted for George Bush in 2004. Like Palin, she has five children and she doesn't buy that the Alaska governor can adequately balance her family and the vice presidency.
"You're somebody's mom and what are you going to do, say, 'Excuse me, country, hold on?' ... She's preaching that she's this mom of the year and taking that poor little baby all over everywhere. And, you know, what she's doing to her 17-year-old daughter is just appalling.'' Lehr said she's bothered by the way Palin's pregnant daughter has been brought into the national spotlight.
Hmmm. So all those hockey moms and soccer moms and just plain old moms don't like how Palin parades around her newborn baby and celebrates her teenage daughters out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Who would've thunk it?
But what about all those upset Hillary supporters? Surely they're all going to vote for McCain now, so that they can have a chance to put a woman, any woman, in the White House. Won't they?
"(Deciding to vote for Obama) ticks me off because I do not want Obama,'' said Democrat Annette Kocsis, 68, a former Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter from Clearwater, scoffing at "the pit bull in lipstick," as Palin has called herself...
"That was almost insulting," Democrat Rhonda Laris of Temple Terrace, another strong Clinton backer skeptical of Obama, said of the Palin pick. "Do they think we're really stupid? ... I'm definitely leaning toward the Democratic side now. Sarah Palin scares the crap out of me."
Hmmm. But what about Palin being so ethical and such a big reformer who will shake up Washington? That will surely appeal to the independent voters, won't it??
Independent voter Bill Chever, 56, another Air Force veteran from St. Petersburg, said he has voted Republican four times and Democrat three times in the last seven presidential races. He likes and trusts Obama but not Obama's party. Democrats have done nothing of consequence while controlling Congress, Chever said, but he's particularly bothered that the Palins are not cooperating in the "Troopergate" investigation into whether she fired the state police chief for not firing her former brother-in-law from the Alaska state police.
"Here we go with Dick Cheney and his group that's not going to talk to anybody," Chever said. "She is Dick Cheney with a dress on."
Hmmm. Maybe McCain's and Palin's stonewalling on and blocking of the Troopergate investigation wasn't the smartest move after all.
The Times reports that nobody in the focus group has finalized a choice, but seven of the panelists said that McCain's running mate selection had made them more likely to vote for Obama, and in several cases much more likely, and only two Republican men "applauded" McCain's selection of Palin. Most people in the group are looking for the debates to help them make up their minds.
Still, the Times conludes that Palin appears to be a "serious obstacle" to McCain's winning over disillusioned Democrats or moderates. Who would've thunk it?"
- TheBlueOne0
Can Science Fiction Save The World?
An engaging podcast by physicist and Sci Fi Author David Brin on the topic. Kinda sorta political. Great ten minute listen.
- TheBlueOne0
Just like Cheney:
"The Hill’s Kevin Bogardus reports, “Sen. Biden (Del.) believes the office he is seeking is solely in the executive branch, according to his staff. But aides to Alaska Gov. Palin did not answer the question”:
[A] spokesman for the Republican presidential campaign did not answer the question. Instead, he e-mailed remarks Palin gave at a campaign rally in Golden, Colo., on Monday.
Palin did not say what branch of government she believes the vice president’s office is part of in those remarks. Instead, Palin said she and Republican presidential nominee John McCain had discussed what responsibilities she would take on as his second-in-command.
Dick Cheney, and his chief aide David Addington, have repeatedly tried to argue that the vice president is not part of the executive branch. Cheney, who has referred to his office as “a unique creature,” has tried to exempt himself from a presidential executive order designed to safeguard classified national security information."
- mg330
Hey, did anyone watch Palin's interview with that scumbag Sean Hannity?
I caught some of it last night and it was the weakest, most obvious pander job by Hannity - by anyone - that I've ever seen.
Loaded questions with obvious talking point answers, it was unreal.
Example:
He asked Palin if she was "for the bridge to nowhere until she was against it."Everyone knows that's a lie. EVERYONE. But the second after she said "I was always against it," Hannity just goes "Okay," taking it as instant truth because it came out of her mouth. No followup, no "but everyone says you're not being truthful, and the facts show it." It made me sick.
Then, I saw a clip tonight where he asks "what countries pose the biggest threat to the United States?"
BIG FUCKING "DUH!!!!" Everyone is going to answer Iran... It was a stupid question to even ask; it was asked to give him the opportunity to show that she's all worldly, like because she thinks that, she's the first person to do so.
What a worthless interview.
- Are you surprised or something?tommyo
- All it does is instill a false sense of confidence in her until Biden chews her up at the debate.TheBlueOne
- hallelujah0
"Is McCain drowning in the Barracuda's wake?
Yesterday we noted that the traditional media could hardly help but notice the obvious pattern of the Republican faithful hanging around McCain/Palin events just long enough to hear the Barracuda speak, then shuffling out on the other guy.
And then there was the moment when the Barracuda accidentally told us all what was on her mind: a Palin/McCain administration:
Today comes word of... a rash of cancellations of Palin events. Has the Barracuda been gaffed? Or is it more gaffes they fear? Or maybe they've just realized they can't fill a venue without the Wasilla Cannonball on the card?
Either way, suddenly Sarah's ducking more events than Todd's ducking subpoenas. In swing and non-swing states alike. What's going on?
Two cancellations in Florida.
Two in California.
Two in Washington state.
At least one in Colorado.
And one in Wyoming.
Poor John McCain. It's just never gonna be his time. First he had his throat cut by George W. Bush in South Carolina in 2000, and now he's being knifed in the back by his own running mate in 2008."
- colin_s0
- Who cares? Seriously I don't get where the size of her town even matters. So quality people only come from large cities?tommyo
- I'm not saying she's 'quality' but this sort of thing is really really stupid.tommyo
- it's actually not, coming from someone who lived in ketchikan, alaska, population 8,000.colin_s
- i think the point is that her mayoral experience is in a tiny podunk townacescence
- So what? If your experience is from NY then you've got better ideas? Oh riiight I forgot, our big city folk aren't really ...tommyo
- stinking up the country...tommyo
- no, but you've probably got more useful experience. you know, more issues, people, responsibilitiesacescence
- i don't know if you're being disingenuous or if you're really just that stupidacescence
- governing is different in alaska. it's like high school but relying more on big government for money.colin_s
- No, I get the benefits of what a metropolitan experience can bring to a candidate. I don't see them being as important as ...tommyo
- moral character. Again, I'm not saying Palin is 'it.' I just don't believe someone can be counted out for being ...tommyo
- from a small town. Didn't Clinton come from a really really small town? Slightly Different I know. But still.tommyo
- That analogy sucks btw. I've been staring at AS3 for the last 12 hours. Brain is FRIED.tommyo
- TheBlueOne0
"Asked by the interviewer how America would pay for a military confrontation with Iran, he said the U.S. should take the country’s resources. “We should plant a flag. Take the oil, take the money,” he said. “We deserve reimbursement."
A few hours after the interview, an unknown woman helped herself to Schwartz’s resources.
He met her in the bar of the swank hotel and invited her to his room. Once there, the woman fixed the drinks and told him to get undressed. And that, the delegate to the Republican National Convention told police, was the last thing he remembered. When (Gabriel Nathan Schwartz) awoke, the woman was gone, as was more than $120,000 in money, jewelry and other belongings.
The thief’s take stunned cops. “It’s very, very, very rare,” Minneapolis Police Sgt. William Palmer said. “I can think of a couple of burglaries where we had that much stolen, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of this kind of deal.”
- GeorgesII0
Morans inc.
- GeorgesII0
Morans inc. pt2
- hallelujah0
"McCain on banking and health
OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.
Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!"
- hallelujah0
"Last week was historic. It is a week that financial and economic people will study for generations. It also marked the end of certain elements of the Republican Party's ideology. Below are statements the Republican party can no longer claim as part of their core ideology.
We are the party of small government
Actually, this week simply added to the the end of this claim. Under Bush II, discretionary spending has increased from $640 billion to $1.040 trillion dollars. Also remember that Bush had a Republican controlled congress for 6 of those years. However, Paulson will send a package to Congress which totals $800 billion. The Treasury will create a new agency to buy bad debt (which the WSJ's Marketbeat blog has called the Treasury Garbage Machine). In short, when the Republicans control all branches of government they spend like drunken sailors.
We Support Free Markets
Last week the SEC banned short-selling in financial shares:
The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced a ban on short-selling financial stocks over the next two weeks. Short-selling is essentially betting that a stock's price will go down. The SEC hopes the ban will reduce downward pressure on the market, but some think it will backfire. Wall Streeter Barry Ritholtz tells Madeleine Brand that the SEC action reverses 1,000 years of theory about how free markets should work.
In short, markets are supported when they are going up. But when they are going down, we're going to do everything we can to prevent them from going down.
We Are the Party of Fiscal Responsibility.
No they aren't. No Republican president has ever balanced a budget. While Republicans have argued that Reagan had to contend with Democrats, Bush II did not for 6 years. Under this scenario where the Republicans controlled all branches of government they never even came close to balancing a budget.
We are the Party of Personal Responsibility
No you're not. When companies make really stupid decisions the Federal government bails them out. Just ask any shareholder of AIG. Or any taxpayer who will now help to finance the latest government bail-out.
Simply put, this week has demonstrated a key point: when the going gets tough, the Republicans become socialists:
If you are a fan of irony, consider this: The conservative movement has utterly hated FDR, and his New Deal programs like Medicaid, Social Security, FDIC, Fannie Mae (1938), and the SEC for nearly 80 years. And for the past 8 years, a conservative was in the White House, with a very conservative agenda. For something like 16 of the past 18 years, the conservative dominated GOP has controlled Congress. Those are the facts.
We now see that the grand experiment of deregulation has ended, and ended badly. The deregulation movement is now an historical footnote, just another interest group, and once in power they turned into socialists. Indeed, judging by the actions of the conservatives in power, and not the empty rhetoric that comes out of think tanks, the conservative movement has effectively turned the United States into a massive Socialist state, an appendage of Communist Russia, China and Venezuela.
Whenever a Republican talking head says they are for any of the above mentioned things they should be questioned to explain how that statement (I'm for free markets) jibes with banning short selling of an entire sector of the market. Whenever a Republican says he is for smaller government, have him explain the nearly doubling of discretionary spending when the Republicans controlled all branches of government.
Simply put, this week demonstrated how hollow many of the Republican values are. They sound great on paper, but aren't put into practice when that result might cause financial harm to another Republican."
- hallelujah0
"Is there anything Sarah Palin -- if that is her real name -- won't lie about? How long do we have to put up with this nonsense?
An internal government document obtained by ABC News appears to contradict Sarah Palin's most recent explanation for why she fired her public safety chief, the move which prompted the now-contested state probe into "Troopergate."
Fighting back against allegations she may have fired her then-Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, for refusing to go along with a personal vendetta, Palin on Monday argued in a legal filing that she fired Monegan because he had a "rogue mentality" and was bucking her administration's directives.
"The last straw," her lawyer argued, came when he planned a trip to Washington, D.C., to seek federal funds for an aggressive anti-sexual-violence program. The project, expected to cost from $10 million to $20 million a year for five years, would have been the first of its kind in Alaska, which leads the nation in reported forcible rape.
The McCain-Palin campaign echoed the charge in a press release it distributed Monday, concurrent with Palin's legal filing. "Mr. Monegan persisted in planning to make the unauthorized lobbying trip to D.C.," the release stated.
But the governor's staff authorized the trip, according to an internal travel document from the Department of Public Safety, released Friday in response to an open records request.
Another backstab. Par for the course with Sarah Barracuda. Approve the trip, then claim you fired him for going.
How curious that she seems to have spent more energy bird-dogging and setting up Monegan than she ever did keeping Wooten away from her sister.
That's the real crime in the Palin family: getting in between Sarah and something she wants.
Someone better check the brake lines on the Straight Talk Express!"
- GeorgesII0
ooops, wanted to post this
Morans inc. pt2
- This guy is a real tool********
- The host's smugness annoys me just as much as the tool who gets interviewedlocustsloth
- This guy is a real tool
- TheBlueOne0
People who hold conservative views are generally more fearful people, says science study:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol…
No shit.
- ukit0
Obama hits 50% in two of the tracking polls
Diageo/Hotline 45 44
Gallup 50 44
Rasmussen Reports 48 47
Research 2000/dKos 50 42These are really good numbers considering people are going to start mailing in ballots soon.
- TheBlueOne0
If it looks like thuggery, smells like thuggery and moves like thuggery, is it not then thuggery?
"In August, protesters at the 2004 RNC successfully won police brutality lawsuits against the New York City police department.
So, a few days later, the Republican Party indemnified the St. Paul police for up to $10 million in the event that charges of police brutality would be brought against them.
Then, at the convention, the police went out and illegally beat up $10 million worth of progressives, including progressive media. It was a free beating for them.
In short, the Republican Party paid for $10 million of thuggery against progressives...
Basically, with no cause, police ran over and beat up some members of the progressive media. They did it because the money they will lose from civil suits over the matter has already been paid. So, of course the charges were dropped. There were no real charges. It was beating, paid for by the Republican Party, pure and simple."
- ukit0
