Sarah Palin

[Kathy_Baratta]

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So because she's a woman and has a son in the military people will vote for her?

I thought the complaint about Obama was his inexperience yet here we have a woman who would be a literal heartbeat away from the presidency, (a presidency that could feature a 72 year-old who has already had cancer twice), and her "experience" consists of being the mayor of a town with one fifth the population of Howell (as a matter of fact, you could fit the entire population of Alaska into New Jersey and still have plenty of elbow room) and less than two years as the state's governor.

Then there's that pesky ethics thing. Seems she is being investigated by Alaskan state officials over the firing of her sister's state trooper husband who, after a "messy" divorce is embroiled in an ugly, ongoing custody battle.

Every woman should be insulted at this obvious pandering to the "Hilllary" contingent. Pandering that says you want a woman - here you go. She might be a very nice lady but I thought we expected (and deserved) more than this shamefully obvious condescension.

KB[/size]

[George_Krebs]

So much for "I am woman, hear me roar" Sounds like someone wants to trade that glass ceiling for something more substantial.

The pick is an absolute stroke of genius. It takes bullets out of the gun of the Democrats and makes the "Annointed One" look even worse for his snub of Hillary.

Obama has been sinking like a stone for weeks now. His pick of Biden as running mate passed through the polls without notice. Speaking of background, isn't Biden most notable because of his plagiarism.  In any case, he likes to brag about his fondness for bloodying opponent's noses. Now he can punch a woman!

She has more executive experience than Obama... she has actually been in charge of something.

So now McCain is too old and Palin is too young. Fancy that! I'll bet Obama-Biden are just the right age, eh?

One of us is going to be wrong, Kathy. We'll see. On first blush I'll side with Paul Begala who yesterday suggested that a choice of Palin  would present a "major problem" for Obama.

Pandering indeed.

p.s. this also allows the Clintons to take an extended vacation, perhaps through November....

[Kathy_Baratta]

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George,

Look into that plagiarism thing. Like all urban myths it's grown all out of proportion. How many of us reference a thought or quote we thought memorable without properly attributing it. Look no further than this Board.    As I said, look into, I think you'll agree it is much ado about nothing. There's no doubt he is a smart-ass who's quick with a quip and sometimes that gets him in hot water. We should both be able to sympathize with that.  

What does make Biden noticeable to me though is the fact that he has been in the US Senate for almost 30 years and yet his net worth is in the area of $200,000. He's no fool and has the respect of his peers and, given his net worth, I'd say he's his own man and has been bought by no one. Now don't get started, I'm not impugning McCain or making any insinuations regarding his integrity. His wealth comes from marrying well.  

Speaking of that, wasn't the label "elitist" tailor-made for someone who is so rich they forget how many houses they own? Do you really feel in your heart that individual even remembers what it's like for the average family who have to live within a budget; who go without in order to be able to just keep going? (If he ever knew at all).[/size]

[George_Krebs]

Can't fight now. On my way to Mulligan's. I'll be at the bar. I'm buying

[Ed_OConnor]

As for the INEXPERIENCE.

OBAMA  is running for PRESIDENT, he should have some life experience to qualify him for the job

Pallin is running for VICE PRESIDENT, in that position she will get the life experience for a  future potential presidential run.

It is a DIFFERENT SITUATION.

Anyway, She is a very impressive person (male or female) it was an excellent choice.

As for the plagerism
Well Obama's "only words" speech can be excused IF he had  stated it by saying something like , A friend recently said ....

Biden's  theft of Neil Kinnocks speech is a different issue, that was a sleazy attempt to use another man's words and try to make them his own.
To me Biden is like a used car salesman.

I believe the Neil Kinnock/Joe Biden Speech is available on the web. Look for your self.

Here is a quote:
NEIL KINNOCK at Welsh Labour Party conference May 1987:

"Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand"

JOE BIDEN IN Sept 1987 during his first presidential campaign:

"Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go a university? Why is it that my wife... is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? ...Is it because they didn't work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It's because they didn't have a platform on which to stand."




 

[Kathy_Baratta]

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Here is a quote:
NEIL KINNOCK at Welsh Labour Party conference May 1987:

"Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand"

JOE BIDEN IN Sept 1987 during his first presidential campaign:

"Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go a university? Why is it that my wife... is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? ...Is it because they didn't work hard? My ancestors who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come after 12 hours and play football for four hours? It's because they didn't have a platform on which to stand."

==================================================

If that's enough to get your knickers in a bind then there's not much I would even attempt to further discuss except to ask:

what's your feeling about "sampling" when it comes to music?  

KB
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[Ray_Spengler]

A Biden/Palin ticket would work for me....

[John_McGauvran]

 Experience? At the age of 44 she was chosen for Vice President. She is the Governor of one of the toughest and harshest states to live in. She does have a son in the army being deployed. That there alone shows she has more interest and experience that Obama.

  And she balances out the ticket. Obama, no foreign experience, young, chooses older man with experience. Experienced McCain older picks younger woman. Hey, he made a good choice.

[Joe Parente]

I posit that it doesn't really matter who gets elected.

Please show me major differences in the candidates in issues they can actually affect.

Drillling in the OCS
McCain: Yes (by law must be environmnatal safeguards)
Obama: Yes (if there's environmental safegauards)

Abortion
Doesn't matter, the president can't overturn a Supreme Court decision.

Iraq
McCain will stay for 100 years
Obama won't commit to a withdrawal date, effectively the same thing.

In other issues, both move toward the center, hence no change.

Maybe I won't bother voting this year.

[Ed_OConnor]

Joe has a point.
But here is the thing.

The COURTS

Not only the Supreme Court but all the federal judgeships.

I do not feel comfortable with  Obama (Rated the #1 Liberal in the Senate) and Biden  (Rated the #3  Liberal in the Senate)  Appointing judges.

These are the guys that make the decision of Police powers... Criminals  "rights"....  Terrorists "rights"  it is not inconceivable that the NJ town COAH can eventually go to a top federal courts... How about Quotas for college admission or for jobs.

I do NOT love McCain but he is better than Obama

[Ray_Spengler]

It it does not matter, why vote?  I agree that its just about irrelevant who is elected except to have someone to blame.  It wont be praise since nothing will change with the gov't until something bad happens.....

I still think Biden/Palin would win.

[John_McGauvran]

 Obama, McCain.

   I have to laugh. As soon as McCain announced his running mate they attack her. Reason? She is one step away from being President. She has no experience. HELLO? Like Obama has? And they want to elect him President. Funny how they turn a blind eye to their own candidate.

  Like it or not, it is a true global economy. Foreign affair is very important when it comes to being a president. It’s not just about war, but about relationships with other countries. Obama picked a running mate with experience in foreign affairs. McCain has experience in foreign affairs. Balance. Obama is kind of soft when it comes to war, deploying troops or making commitments to such. He picked a tough running mate. McCain, tough, can make the decisions and can appear hard picked a woman to hold him back and have him take a second look at reasoning. Balance.

   Woman, man, old, young, all irrelevant. They bring about balance. Time to start looking at the issues being brought to the dinner table. Economy, Illegal’s, medical, war, and B.S. spending.

[George_Krebs]

from the Sunday Times of London   Aug. 31


Sarah Palin: conservatives find the girl of their dreams

The Alaskan governor’s family life and political views press the right’s buttonsSarah Baxter
When Sarah Palin stepped into the spotlight as John McCain’s running mate in Dayton, Ohio, and promised that women could “shatter that glass ceiling once and for all”, it was an electrifying moment in a presidential election that had already produced its share of upsets and surprises.

History was on the march again the morning after Barack Obama became the first African-American to accept his party’s White House nomination. After the fireworks, the 80,000-strong crowd who had cheered Obama to the skies at the Mile High stadium in Denver woke up with a hangover.

“We may be seeing the first woman president. As a Democrat, I am reeling,” said Camille Paglia, the cultural critic. “That was the best political speech I have ever seen delivered by an American woman politician. Palin is as tough as nails.”

With her beehive hairdo and retro specs, Palin, 44, has a “naughty librarian vibe”, according to Craig Ferguson, the Scottish comedian who stars on late-night US television. However, the selection of Palin, the governor of Alaska and a mother of five, as the first female Republican vice-presidential nominee is no joke for the Democrats.

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Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio chat show host, exulted, “We’re the ones with a babe on the ticket” — one, moreover, with a reputation as a tax-cutter and corruption buster in her job as the first woman governor of Alaska.

Palin’s selection on the eve of the Republican convention in St Paul, Minnesota, has set the stage for an epic battle for the votes of women, African-Americans, evangelical Christians and the young. The demographic wars that dominated the contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton are now set to be replicated in the national election.

Will America fall in love with Palin or will she fizzle, like Dan Quayle, the vice-president to George Bush Sr who could not spell “potatoe”? Can she help McCain to defeat Obama, a modern political phenomenon, who drew a record-shattering television audience of nearly 40m — more than the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing — to watch his convention speech?

“Good Lord, we had barely 12 hours of Democrat optimism,” said Paglia. “It was a stunningly timed piece of PR by the Republicans.”

Whether Palin’s selection is more than a political stunt depends on how she handles the electoral pressure cooker. With the election in November, there is no time for on-the-job training. Karl Rove, Bush’s former aide, offered a guarded welcome to the “gun-packing, hockey-playing” governor, sayhing: “We’ll get a taste in the next five days of how well she does in the 62 days that follow.”

After Obama’s acceptance speech was wiped from the front pages, even he was forced to acknowledge that she “seems like a compelling person . . . with a terrific personal story”. Republicans are hailing their potential new vice-president as the all-American girl of their dreams.

Palin is gunning for the 18m women who voted for Hillary Clinton — a third of whom have not made up their mind to back Obama, according to the latest polls. McCain specifically deployed the language of feminism and civil rights when announcing her candidacy. “She stands up for what’s right and she doesn’t let anyone tell her to sit down,” he said.

Palin’s parents learnt that she had been selected by McCain while they were heading for a remote camp in Alaska to hunt caribou. “I was speechless,” her father said. The skin of a grizzly bear that he shot drapes the sofa in her office.

The more Republicans examined Palin’s record, the more they liked it, although some are fearful of buyer’s remorse. She was born in the conservative heartland of Idaho before moving to Alaska as a baby. At school she was nicknamed Sarah Barracuda on the basketball court because she was so competitive and she led the prayers before each game.

She was a “hockey mom” who cut her teeth at the parent-teacher association before becoming mayor of Wasilla, a suburb of Anchorage with a population under 7,000. In 2006 she beat the corrupt male establishment in Alaska to win the governorship. She opposes same-sex marriage, but one of her first acts in office was to veto a bill blocking health benefits for gay lovers of public employees.

She hunts, ice-fishes and is a crack shot who knows how to fire an M16 rifle. “I was raised in a family where gender was not going to be an issue,” she said. “The girls did what the boys did. Apparently in Alaska that’s quite commonplace.” No softy, she sued to stop the federal government making polar bears an endangered species and favours drilling for oil in the Arctic wildlife refuge. However, she also levied a windfall tax on oil companies.

Palin was glamorous enough to have entered beauty contests to earn money for college. She was crowned Miss Wasilla in her home town and was runner-up in the 1984 Miss Alaska contest. “They made us line up in bathing suits and turn our backs so the male judges could look at our butts. I couldn’t believe it,” she told Vogue, more amused than outraged.

Counterbalancing McCain’s reputation as a political dinosaur, Palin smoked pot when it was legal in Alaska, admitting, “I can’t claim a Bill Clinton and say I never inhaled”, and her children, Track, 19, Bristol, 17, Willow, 13, Piper, 7, and Trig, four months, have hippie-sounding names. Track, who joined the US infantry in September last year, is about to be deployed to Iraq. “It has really opened my eyes to international events and how war impacts everyday Americans like us,” she said.

On stage in Ohio, the Palin family looked every bit as photogenic as the Obamas on their big night in Denver. Todd, her rugged husband, is part Yupik Eskimo and is four-time champion of the 2,000-mile Iron Dog snowmobile race. If that is not macho enough, he is a member of the steelworkers’ union and a seasonal oil production operator for BP, from which he earned $93,000 last year. He also helps to run the family’s commercial fishing business. They eloped in 1988 to avoid the cost of a wedding. “We had a bad fishing year so we didn’t have any money,” he said.

Like his wife, he is able to swap the traditional roles. “My husband loves being a dad as much as I love being a mom,” Palin said. “I’ve got great help there.”

She needs it. They “wanted enough kids for a basketball team”, she once said, but Trig was born this year with Down’s syndrome. Palin knew there were complications while she was pregnant but never considered an abortion. When he was born, she said, “I’m looking at him right now and I see perfection. Yeah, he has an extra chromosome. I keep thinking: in our world, what is normal and what is perfect?” Undaunted, she held a meeting as governor three days after giving birth. “I just put down the BlackBerrys and pick up the breast pump,” she said of her life as a working mother.

Left-wing websites such as the Daily Kos are leading the chorus of disapproval for now. “Having had two children at home at the age of four months, I know how much help they need even without unfortunate medical conditions,” said one tut-tutter.

Republican women, however, are delighted by Palin’s example. Kellyanne Conway, 41, a Republican pollster and mother of three, said, “I really feel mother knows best without the peanut gallery giving unsolicited advice. She strongly conveys to women today that you don’t have to choose between a successful career and motherhood. You do have to make sacrifices, but you can have it all.”

Evangelical Christians could turn out in droves for Palin, a member of Feminists for Life who opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest, if she maintains her promise.

Deborah Fikes, a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals, said: “I would just trust that the child is not neglected in any way. There are millions of women who work. Why is it that the father cannot provide the same standard of care? There has been an evolving view of working women even in conservative Christian circles.”

Fikes said Palin was an inspiring choice: “I didn’t think the Republicans would pick a female candidate for another decade, but John McCain is not a typical conservative leader.”

Other conservative women have pointed out that Palin was a much more effective counterweight to the super-competent and glamorous Michelle Obama than Cindy McCain, wife of the Republican candidate.

Cindy, a beer industry heiress who bought the seven homes that McCain cannot remember and once said the only way to travel around her home state of Arizona was by private plane, was under fire last week from her own half-sister. She said she was voting for Obama after Cindy had repeatedly claimed to be an “only child” and never expressed regret that her father had ignored her half-sister in his will.

In fact, even though the Clinton aides could barely conceal their satisfaction when she was chosen, the woman who Palin upstages most of all is Hillary. If Obama wins the election, Hillary will have to wait until 2016 to stand again. And if he loses, Palin will be first in line to become America’s first woman president.

[Maria_Lynn_Lamb]

oh please i have so much to say about this, but i am just about running out the door, so i will have to come back later

for now all i can say is wth??

obama is surely happy though!

[Kathy_Baratta]

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Normally I would NEVER re-copy anything that was anonymous from over at NJdotcom but the following said everything I think and all I had to do was cut and paste.  

KB
====================================================

3243. Oh wow, he picked a woman
by MpanMom, 8/31/08 9:50 ET
Are we supposed to be jumping up and down because McCain is breaking the glass ceiling by selecting a woman running mate? Sorry but the Dems put a woman on the ticket over 20 years ago...but we always knew the GOP was slow to catch on. McCain's selection of Palin in order to garner the woman's votes is reminiscent of Bush Sr's selection of another incompetent running mate, Dan Quayle, who was selected because he was young and good looking in hopes of garnering the vote of us "ill informed" women who the GOP assumes votes based on superficial things such as good looks or gender. It's insulting to all women. As a democrat, I am thrilled McCain selected Palin, that selection is going to drive all women, GOP, Dem and Independent in DROVES to vote for Obama. Palin believes the government should have control over my body...isn't the GOP supposed to be in favor of LESS GOVERNMENT intervention?* There's a good reason that abortion is still legal after 20 years of Reagan and Bush Administrations....because the majority of the country wants it that way and even when the GOP controlled all three branches, they STILL did not move to overturn a woman's right to choose because they want to stay in power MORE than they care what they consider "murder" of the unborn. The GOP knew that overturning Roe V Wade would be the surest and quickest way to ensure both the White House and Congress would be turned over to the Democrats. The GOP gives the right to lifers LIP SERVICE every single election and never deliver and the sheep STILL vote based on a candidate who SAYS they are anti-abortion but has never DONE anything in 30 years about banning abortion. Baaaaaaaa Baaaaaa Baaaaaa.

KB
              
*For the record - I am anti-abortion but, pro-choice. I can't see forcing a baby to be brought up by someone who didn't want it from the start but there are soooo many people who would love to adopt that same child.
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