Hear it from an Alaskan
I am sick of the GOP failing to move Beyond Good and Evil (that's an allusion to Nietzsche, if you were wondering about the capital letters). To that end, I’m sick of the Orwellian perpetuation of the nebulous strawman that is terrorism…Giuliani (a fascist, who like most fascists produces clean streets but cannot be trusted with real power): “the only issue that matters is radical Islamic terrorism.” Really, the only one? The biggest one, even? Not Russia? China? I’ll leave out the entire Muslim world b/c that’s terrorism according to him…how about energy? Immigration? The deficit/debt? Can the GOP do anything other than rally evangelicals with nonsense about God that’s thinly veiled Christocracy, and scare people into voting for the most hawkish party?
I am sick of GOP hypocrisy on 'values,' embodied most acutely by the applause for Bristol Palin--not by her, by the APPLAUSE FOR her. Where is the comment, “We are appalled at her poor behavior, but abortion is impermissible, so we will attempt to force her to learn her actions have consequences, even if it means Mr. Palin winds up having to raise our grandchild (along with Trig) by himself while I’m VP;” at least then there’d be consistency, instead of, “Abstinence only! What’s that, my unwed teenager is pregnant? Yay, another vessel for Christ/warm body to send to Iraq!”
Palin parading her firstborn’s enlistment (as well as her nephew’s…as if my aunts and uncles could take credit/blame for what I’ve done with my life) but saying Bristol is off limits…either your children’s choices reflect your parenting and are fair game, or they don’t; pick one.
Romney deriding east-coast big-government elites…he, the son of a MI governor, the governor of MA who mandated healthcare, etc.
Everyone saying it’s time to get the big-govt liberals out of DC…I’m sorry, haven’t we had GOP Pres for 8 years, and GOP Congress 12 of last 14? Didn’t Reagan and Dubya single-handedly increase the size of gov’t by an order of magnitude to satisfy neocon agendas? Last liberal to increase gov’t was LBJ and that was Medicare, which Dubya increased, let’s not forget. And you know what, Jimmy Carter was right about energy 30 years ago (and while he was a wuss with the hostages, we now know Reagan officials with Iran contacts postponed their Carter-negotiated release a few months so that it could happen after Reagan took office).
Arguing that Palin’s experienced but Obama isn’t…either they both are, or only she is b/c only executive experience counts IN WHICH CASE MCCAIN ISN’T EXPERIENCED EITHER…obviously they both are, BUT obviously Obama is more experienced: community organizer doesn’t matter, but several years IL State Sen and 4 years US Sen do (as does 2 years of running the Pres campaign he’s run), and they matter more than several years as small-town mayor and 2 years as gov of AK…US Presidents without executive experience include James Madison, James Monroe, James Polk, Abraham Lincoln, Harry Truman (mere months as VP before FDR died), JFK, Ford (who the GOP now lionizes, as far as I can tell b/c he pardoned Nixon, thereby saving the GOP embarrassment), and many others…Dubya was a two-term governor, let’s not forget. From a comment I saw on a CNN webpage, I lift the following comparison:
Obama:
B.A in political science from Columbia University, with a specialization in international relations
J.D. in Law from Hardvard, graduated magna cum laude; President of the Harvard Law Review
12 years (92-04) teaching constitutional law
7 years State Senator: sponsored more than 800 bills
4 years Senator for Illinos, a state with 12.8 million people
Palin:
Bachelor's in journalism from University of Idaho
4 years Wasilla City Council (8000 people)
6 years Wasilla mayor (8000 people)
1 year 'Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission'
20 months governor of a state with 660,000 people
By the way, Obama has sponsored multiple pieces of major bipartisan legislation; Nuke Non-Prolif with Lugar, Ethics Reform and Voting Transparency with Coburn, Immigration Reform with MCCAIN (that one didn’t pass), etc., despite the repeated lies by even JOE LIEBERMAN that he’s done nothing in DC, let alone anything bipartisan.
I don’t know what’s more disgusting, that they attack Obama so personally with such obvious glee in order to satisfy the base, or that the base loves it so, when Obama is clearly a decent human if nothing else, who has gone out of his way to say the same about McCain.
How do you like the crowd shots at the GOP; enough old white men for you? In 20 years it will be entirely an evangelical party b/c everyone else will have died and nobody left alive will be interested in the GOP other than for religious motivation, as the Dems in the meantime will have swallowed enough businessmen with consciences and/or religious objections to get over their last lingering vestiges of socialism.
As for McCain, I have lost lots of respect for him, because when it’s hit the fan, he’s caved on every maverick position, MOST IMPORTANTLY ON STANDING UP TO EVANGELICALS AND TO PERSONAL ATTACKS ON OBAMA, in order to win the nom and try to win the Prez. It makes me think my dad’s been right all along: he said, back in 2000, “McCain’s not a maverick, he’s been picking ground to oppose the GOP so he could pretend to be a maverick ever since the Keating scandal, to distract from that embarrassment.”
It’s almost not worth mentioning that Huckabee’s statement that Palin got more mayoral votes than Biden got Presidential ones is a incomprehensible lie (Biden got nearly 80k in IA alone, while there are only 9k people in all of Wasilla, to say nothing of how many registered voters there are there).
In case you're unclear what Palin really thinks, read this:
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) - Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin told ministry students at her former church that the United States sent troops to fight in the Iraq war on a 'task that is from God.' In an address last June, the Republican vice presidential candidate also urged ministry students to pray for a plan to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline in the state, calling it 'God's will.' Palin asked the students to pray for the troops in Iraq, and noted that her eldest son, Track, was expected to be deployed there. 'Our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God,' she said. 'That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God's plan.' A video of the speech was posted at the Wasilla Assembly of God's Web site before finding its way on to other sites on the Internet. Palin told graduating students of the church's School of Ministry, 'What I need to do is strike a deal with you guys.' As they preached the love of Jesus throughout Alaska, she said, she'd work to implement God's will from the governor's office, including creating jobs by building a pipeline to bring North Slope natural gas to North American markets. 'God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that,' she said. 'I can do my job there in developing our natural resources and doing things like getting the roads paved and making sure our troopers have their cop cars and their uniforms and their guns, and making sure our public schools are funded,' she added. 'But really all of that stuff doesn't do any good if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God.' Palin attended the evangelical church from the time she was a teenager until 2002, the church said in a statement posted on its Web site. She has continued to attend special conferences and meetings there. Religious conservatives have welcomed her selection as John McCain's running mate. Rob Boston, a spokesman for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, lamented Palin's comments. 'I miss the days when pastors delivered sermons and politicians delivered political speeches,' he said. 'The United States is increasingly diverse religiously. The job of a president is to unify all those different people and bring them together around policy goals, not to act as a kind of national pastor and bring people to God.' The section of the church's Web site where videos of past sermons were posted was shut down Wednesday, and a message was posted saying that the site 'was never intended to handle the traffic it has received in the last few days.'
Finally, some liberal women finally are saying what needs to be said…not Geralidine Ferraro, who is happy a woman got nominated regardless of that woman's views (this makes Ferraro worthless); not Hillary, who is too worried about 2012 to stick her neck out one inch for anyone but herself (again, worthless)…but Gloria Steinem:
'Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the 'white-male-only' sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes. But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie. Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, 'Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs.' This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience. Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, 'I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?' When asked about Iraq, she said, 'I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq.' She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on 'God, guns and gays' ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act. Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves 'abstinence-only' programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child. So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, 'women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,' so he may be voting for Palin's husband. Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest. Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women. And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children. This could be huge.'
And here's some more on the sexism subject: “[F]ormer Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina said [at the convention, as part of the GOP’s orchestrated, ironic rebuttal to scrutiny of Palin], “The Republican Party will not stand by while Gov. Palin is subjected to sexist attacks.” Just last spring, Palin herself scoffed when Hillary Clinton’s campaign complained about a double standard in coverage. “When I hear a statement like that coming from a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine about that excess criticism, or maybe a sharper microscope put on her, I think, 'Man, that doesn't do us any good, women in politics, or women in general, trying to progress this country,' ” Palin said…Barbara Risman, a leader of the Council on Contemporary Families and a sociology professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, walked a middle ground on the emergence of gender identity politics in the presidential race. “It makes absolutely no sense for me to vote for a woman just because I have a vagina and so does she,” said Risman. “But it does make sense for me…[to] believe that someone who has lived a life like mine just might understand my struggles more than others.” And she hoped that Palin and the uproar over her coverage would prove itself to be a cultural milestone: “I think it’s really important, from this day forward, that we all ask about every candidate’s work life and home life. It’s sexism otherwise…we have to be careful not to ask her questions that we wouldn’t ask a male candidate.”
Risman is right. So, should we ask about everyone’s personal lives, or nobody’s? I’ve always said leaders’ personal lives don’t matter, b/c theoretically, one’s individual character doesn’t affect one’s professional judgment. But empirically, the opposite seems to be true: shady people have shady motives for what they do professionally, and inevitably, their actions aren’t pure. Look at Bill Clinton’s paper-thin efforts to do anything actually good for the world, beyond preening for cameras. Look at Dubya’s evangelical motivation for the wars du jour.
So, maybe it matters. Which would mean it matters that Edwards didn’t quit the race after Elizabeth’s recurrence, even though they have a two kids under 10, to say nothing of Riele (bad). It matters that McCain dumped his car-crash surviving wife for a beauty queen heiress (bad). It matters that Biden had to be begged to take office after his wife’s death, has commuted home to Wilmington every night, and took his two then-young sons with him on his second honeymoon (good)—just like it matters that he plagiarized a lot b/c he was so desperate to be President when he smelled a chance (bad). It matters that Palin is a hypocritical evangelical (bad). It matters that Obama is so chillingly disciplined that he has executed on the only, highly improbable plan that could propel him, a young black man with an African absentee father, to within striking distance of the Presidency (good).
The abbreviated Obama/McCain head-to-head: do you want an implusive opportunist ADMITTEDLY indelibly affected by years of torture who you HOPE has been mellowed by age sitting across the table from Putin, or do you want an agile man who's demonstrated a capacity to think decades ahead and execute with precision? Sue me, but I think a brilliant President might actually be an asset, for a change--and we haven't had one who's brilliant AND disciplined since...FDR? Wilson? Teddy? Abe? Washington? Pretty short, impressive, and bipartisan list...throw in the prospect of a President who'd be a role model for a generation of black American kids and a magnet for the world's most talented emigrants (whom we desperately need--'Come to America, your child CAN be President'), and you've gotta go for O...to say nothing of him being a salve for the world's opinion of us, which perhaps you don't care about (but should), or domestic issues, where I slightly prefer Obama but admittedly see how a reasonable person could slightly prefer McCain.
posted by AmericanCrystalBall @ 7:16 PM
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