Brian Donovan said:Hans-Joerg Mueller said:
Brian,It is the old story, debating a fundamentalist is a “no room” situation.
Yeah, I know. I ignore about 2/3’s of the posts in Off Topic but if us “bleeding hearts” ignored them all, Steve would be lonely.-Brian
Brian Donovan said:
Has there ever been a shotgun weddin' in the White House's rose garden before? :lol:-Brian
Brian Donovan said:
Ken Brunt said:
If her biggest sin is this “troopergate” thing, I can live with that. After all, she was his boss and the buck stops at her desk.Palin’s probable biggest shortcoming is being so new to the political scene she hasn’t had the time to read her required Republican reading -
(http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n214/altterrain/forums/DickCheney-ATL.jpg)
-Brian
mike omalley said:
Yikes! She just announced that her daughter, 17, is pregnant. She made the announcement, she says, to stop rumors that she was not really the mother of her youngest child.Huh?
"A blogger at the DailyKos, ArcXIX, wrote a vitriolic post titled “Sarah Palin is NOT the Mother” that accused Bristol, a fit-looking adolescent teen, of having a “baby bump” in a photo they allege was taken March 9th of this year.
“Sarah, I’m calling you a liar” wrote blogger ArcXIX. "And not even a good one. Trig Paxson Van Palin is not your son. He is your grandson. The sooner you come forward with this revelation to the public, the better. “Photos of Bristol with detailed commentary about her abdomen are contained in the post. The photo was actually taken by the Anchorage Daily News in 2006. Baby Trig was born on April 18, 2008. The logistical timeline of a 9-month pregnancy, however, didn’t stop the lefty bloggers from pushing the story. Neither did other photos of a visibly pregnant Palin taken closer to the date she gave birth.”
Meanwhile:
John McCain’s newly-minted vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin revealed her daughter, Bristol, is 5 months pregnant amid intense rumors the governor “faked” her pregnancy earlier this year to cover an out of wedlock child.
“Our beautiful daughter Bristol came to us with news that as parents we knew would make her grow up faster than we had ever planned. We’re proud of Bristol’s decision to have her baby and even prouder to become grandparents,” Sarah and Todd Palin said in the brief statement released by the McCain campaign.
“Bristol and the young man she will marry are going to realize very quickly the difficulties of raising a child, which is why they will have the love and support of our entire family,” the Palins said.
If they are proud of her decision to have the baby does that mean they are pro-choice? I mean, if they are not pro-choice then there was never any decision to be made
mike omalley said:Sure there is a choice. Raise the child or offer it for adoption. There are MANY people out there who would love to adopt a newborn (especially one without all the health and behavior problems associated with "crack babies")
If they are proud of her decision to have the baby does that mean they are pro-choice? I mean, if they are not pro-choice then there was never any decision to be made
Ken Brunt said:So possible abuse of authority and failing to be truthful about it is OK with you? You prove my point that morality only applies to the "other" party. If this "troopergate" was about Joe Biden.........many of you would be calling for his head. Her firing of Monegan may have been legal, but was it ethical or moral? Her attempts to get the former brother-in-law fired ? Legal? Ethical? Moral? Being less than truthful about the whole mess? Oh, I forgot. It was a press conference. She was not under oath. I guess that makes it OK? Ralph
If her biggest sin is this "troopergate" thing, I can live with that. After all, she was his boss and the buck stops at her desk.
Mik said:The quote was "We're proud of Bristol's decision to have her baby". "Have" and "raise" are very different words. The statement alludes to a different choice. This may not have been their intent.mike omalley said:Sure there is a choice. Raise the child or offer it for adoption. There are MANY people out there who would love to adopt a newborn (especially one without all the health and behavior problems associated with "crack babies")
If they are proud of her decision to have the baby does that mean they are pro-choice? I mean, if they are not pro-choice then there was never any decision to be made
As for crack babies…do a little research on fetal alcohol syndrome. Their problems can be even more serious.
Ralph
This thing is really weird–the rumors about Trig, the baby with Down syndrome, not being Palin’s, struck me as overheated and nasty. But then I started noticing some odd things, like the fact that her water broke and she went ahead and gave a speech.
Ok, fine, she’s tough, but then this is the really puzzling part. In order to lay to rest the rumors about Trig, she announces that her daughter is now pregnant. Why not just show Trig’s birth certificate? Obama had to produce his birth certificate, when right wing blogs started claiming he was not bor in the US. He produced it. If she wanted to lay the rumors to rest, she could have just called the hospital and told them to release a copy of the birth certificate. Instead, she throws her daughter to the media feeding frenzy and makes the poor kid’s pregnancy a national issue.
What kind of parent does that?
McCain didn’t do his homework
Ric Golding said:
Dave,The best I can come up with is that the Democrats were flanked by McCain’s selection and totally caught off guard. They are working hard to regroup and defend their positions, but they were definately sucker punched.
The “over the moon” statement was the talking point cover of “we welcome any and all challengers”. If nothing else, the contest has become more interesting.
The notion that McKain caught not only Democrats, but also members of his own party, totally off guard sounds very McKain-like. I can imagine him taking equal pleasure at the discomfiture the choice has caused in BOTH camps!
Mike,
What kind of parent does that? I think it was better to bring it out instead of letting the press make some story out of a pregnancy.
“McCain didn’t do his homework” - maybe it wasn’t considered as an important political decision. I think the family has made the right decision to support their children.
You said earlier - “If they are proud of her decision to have the baby does that mean they are pro-choice? I mean, if they are not pro-choice then there was never any decision to be made”
“Pro-choice” is the word liberals use because they think “pro-baby killing” sounds tacky or unsophisticated. But I think you knew that.
Ralph Berg said:Ralph, I'm not going to get into a Legal, Moral or Ethical debate with you, not with the other candidate's record.........his speaks for itself. Both of them!Ken Brunt said:So possible abuse of authority and failing to be truthful about it is OK with you? You prove my point that morality only applies to the "other" party. If this "troopergate" was about Joe Biden.........many of you would be calling for his head. Her firing of Monegan may have been legal, but was it ethical or moral? Her attempts to get the former brother-in-law fired ? Legal? Ethical? Moral? Being less than truthful about the whole mess? Oh, I forgot. It was a press conference. She was not under oath. I guess that makes it OK? Ralph
If her biggest sin is this "troopergate" thing, I can live with that. After all, she was his boss and the buck stops at her desk.
I’m just saying, if Palin wanted to put rumors to rest the way to do it would simply be to release the birth certificate for Trig. Instead, she makes this choice to parade her daughter’s pregnancy before the media. That’s just weird
Speaking for myself, I’m delighted the her daughter decided to have and keep the kid. I want abortions to be safe legal and rare. But why am I supposed to praise her for making a decision that Palin and McCain want to take away?
I know conservatives think liberals prefer killing babies, are against life etc, but this reinforces what a lot of liberals believe which is the McCain is all for choice for people he knows, for his family, but not for other people. I’d like everyone to have the right to make the choice bristol made. That’s why it’s called pro-choice.
I’m not usually good at predicting, but I’m predicting by Friday Palin is out as VP.
Palin was also apparently a member of the Alaskan Independence party, which seeks to get Alaska to seceed from the US. Here’s the Party’s website
In this video the Vice Chairman of the party gives a history of it and names Palin as a member.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHFY1otOWjQ
Palin addressed the AIP in 2008:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHFY1otOWjQ
Do you really want as VP someone who wants to reduce the US to 49 states? Someone who hates American so much that she wants to leave it?
I just saw a link–ABC news has confirmed that she was a member of the party and that she and her husband attended the Party’s annual convention in 1994. Here’s a quote from the Party’s founder
“I’m an Alaskan, not an American. I’ve got no use for America or her damned institutions.” - Joe Vogler, founder of the Alaskan Independence Party
More and more this looks like it was a crazy choice
mike omalley said:This is why the announcements are made right before the conventions. No time for internal debate. The party faithful must jump on the bandwagon. Ralph
I'm not usually good at predicting, but I'm predicting by Friday Palin is out as VP.
My, oh my, haven’t we gotten far afield from bats in de belfry?
That’s why I love the silly season.
Diminishing Palin
How the left will try.
by Dean Barnett
08/31/2008 12:00:00 AM
In 1981, former Harry Truman consigliere and LBJ Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford memorably labeled the new Republican sheriff in town an “amiable dunce.” At the time, Clifford was the living embodiment of the Washington establishment, and his glib analysis showed that while you can find the occasional memorable phrase on the D.C. cocktail circuit, facile conclusions delight the crowd more than serious inquiry. It comes as no small irony that in the years that followed, the discovery of Reagan’s voluminous private writings revealed him to be the finest writer and most original political philosopher to sit in the Oval Office since at least Theodore Roosevelt. As for the condescending genius Mr. Clifford, he ended up the 1980s enmeshed in the BCCI scandal, thanks largely to his own confusion. At least that’s how he told the story, complaining to the New York Times, “I have a choice of seeming either stupid or venal.” Clifford opted for the former.
However obtuse, Clifford’s summation of Reagan sat on the cutting edge of a new school of political partisanship. Starting with Gerald Ford, the inside-the-beltway class and its amplifiers in the media have routinely decided that Republicans who seek national office are dullards. Literally every Republican candidate for president since 1980 has had his intellect belittled. Even Bob Dole, a candidate who had spent decades proving his remarkable mental acuity in Congress, had to face such salvos because his age had allegedly dulled his mental edge. Sound vaguely familiar?
Of course, no such scrutiny greets Democratic candidates. Barack Obama can’t make it through a 30 second extemporaneous statement on his campaign bus without a profusion of “ums” and “ahs.” And yet Obama’s stumbling diction has yet to interest his worshippers in the press the way that George H.W. Bush’s periodic wrestling matches with the English language did. For those fortunate enough to have forgotten the 1988 presidential race, Michael Dukakis’s principal talking point was that he was more competent, i.e. more intelligent, than Bush.
During the 2004 campaign, the New York Times’s Howell Raines wrote, “Does anyone in America doubt that Kerry has a higher IQ than (George W.) Bush? I’m sure the candidates’ SATs and college transcripts would put Kerry far ahead.” Of course, Raines could have done some research before making such a sweeping statement, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable. Take it from one who knows–polemicizing is much more fun and much less work than analyzing.
If Raines had bothered with research, he would have found he was wrong on all counts. Kerry’s college transcript which included four D’s in his freshman year at Yale was a special embarrassment given that candidate Kerry had boasted about his serious pursuit of scholarship compared to the president’s frat-boy frivolities. But in Raines’s defense, how could he have known that research was necessary? Everyone understood that Kerry possessed a blazing intellect while Bush was some village’s missing idiot. Everyone among the self-satisfied liberal media, anyway.
The pattern continues. When Barack Obama trotted out Washington warhorse Joe Biden as his vice presidential pick, the media immediately clucked “gravitas” and “experience.” Okay, we can’t deny the “experience” angle, as Biden has occupied a Senate seat since Obama was 11 years old. But one would think that “gravitas” would imply a political record noteworthy for more than just its length. Guys like Sam Nunn are respected by members of both parties; during his long stay in the senate, Nunn was always serious and often correct. Until Barack Obama plucked him out of tiny Delaware, Joe Biden’s principal renown was for talking too much and saying too little.
And yet the media has credulously treated Biden as a serious figure, a courtesy they did not extend him during either of his presidential runs. One can only imagine how inquisitive reporters would handle a Republican nominee for vice-president who graduated 86th in his law school class of 95 as Biden did. As for Biden’s unfortunate history with plagiarism, the less said the better. At least that seems to be the media’s view now that he’s on the ticket. Somehow I doubt that 36 years in the senate would wash away such stains for a Republican. Speaking of 36 years, that’s almost the exact length of time that Joe Biden has also served as a garrulous gaffe machine. And yet no one from the New York Times or Washington Post has yet mined his greatest hits and reported the comedy gold that lurks within.
Of course, Sarah Palin will get no such luck. Because it’s difficult to argue that Barack Obama has more experience or has achieved greater accomplishments than Palin, the Democrats are left to fall back on their old Obama standby–Judgment. As Judgment is applied in the Obama context, it means Obama can serve as president because he’s extremely intelligent. After all, here’s Howell Raines’s dream candidate–a guy who really did get good grades in school.
So in order to bring down Palin, her malefactors on the left will have to argue a lack of “readiness,” which with the thinly credentialed Obama on the other ticket can only serve as a shorthand for lack of intelligence. Chances are, ink-stained wretches are plumbing Palin’s every past public utterance desperately seeking the evidence that proves she too is an amiable dunce. Of course, any misstatement on the campaign trail will serve as prima facie proof of her dim intellect. True, political observers have formed gambling pools wagering on when Joe Biden will make his first hilarious gaffe as Barack Obama’s running mate. While that gaffe, inevitable as it is, may do damage to the ticket, no one on the New York Times editorial board will conclude from it that Joe Biden isn’t that bright. Sarah Palin will not receive the same benefit of the doubt.
In some ways, being Sarah Palin for the next two months and change doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. In spite of her many and notable self-made successes, an entire intellectual industry has already sprouted up with the sole intention of proving that she’s a moron. The left wants to Quayle-ize her, and their efforts to do so won’t be half-hearted.
But there is good news for Sarah Palin as the latter-day Howell Raineses and Clark Cliffords line up to smear her: She controls how the American people will come to view her much more than they do. There’s a reason her excellent speech on Friday set off such a firestorm of rage and irrational hissy-fits on the left. Speaking directly to the American people, Palin cut an attractive and intelligent figure. Regardless of the left’s anger, the American people will believe their own eyes rather than a frustrated blogger’s or haughty anchorman’s blustery “analysis.”
When Clark Clifford toured the D.C. cocktail party circuit with his “amiable dunce” assessment of Ronald Reagan, most of the assembled sippers agreed. History proved them wrong. But that’s not what really has the left rattled as they set off in pursuit of Sarah Palin. The American people knew Ronald Reagan was no dunce long before the Clark Cliffords of Washington admitted as much.
Dean Barnett is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
I hadn’t heard about Palin being pro-states rights. She sounds like a better candidate all the time. 
Hell, I’ve been for Southern Illinois succeeding from Chicago for 30 years.
When the going gets hot…use the Ronald Regan card.
No offense to Sarah Palin…but it seems to me her family needs her now.
Of course, it is her choice to make.
Ralph
Ralph Berg said:[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODu888i14-I&feature=related]76 trombones led the big parade![/url]
This is why the announcements are made right before the conventions. No time for internal debate. The party faithful must jump on the bandwagon. Ralph
Why do you guys hate America?
