The Republican Platform has items that we know McCain does not agree with. Obama is known as a bridge builder. They could make history if Obama invited McCain to jump over to the Democratic Party. The “old McCain” bridgebuilder/reformer would be an asset to the Dems. It’s not too late, but is has to happen before he accepts his party’s nomination. History in the making! I’m not kidding; I sent this idea to my Senator: Feingold.

I think John McCain and the Republican party are happy to use hurricane Gustaf to distract attention away from the policies of the last eight years. Bush and Cheney must be breathing a big sign of relief that they don’t have to stand up and tell the nation what a great job they have done. The Republicans are running from their party conference like rats from a sinking ship.

Obama has offered to call on his network of millions of supporters to provide volunteers and donations. McCain on the other hand has asked us to pray! Which one of these solutions will help the victims more?

As someone has said, “Faith without good works is dead”. So prayers are always appropriate, whether to pray for or thank God for something or just to praise God. So altho I think John McCain is correct in asking for prayers, I think he could imitate Obama and suggest that the money that will be spent by lobbyists at the convention, instead be sent to the victims of Gustav, whether they be in the South or in Haiti. God does not care about geographic or politics boundaries.

I am a bit surprised at the outcry about Sarah Palin’s lack of experience to be president IF McCain dies in office. By contrast, so many seem to be excited by their candidate for the office of president, who is no more experienced than Palin. AND, if elected, he WILL BE president in January, 2009 (only 5 months from right now)! I must be missing something in this discussion. PJS

Sen. McCain says it’s time to stop being partisan and start being an American. This is pure sanctimony, straight out of Chapter One in the Republican electoral playbook. The Republican party has long benefited from odious partisanship. As I wrote in a previous comment, the party gained its national ascendancy with appeals to outright racism (known as the “Southern Strategy”), which won them the entire South and much else and has been a major reason why they’ve won seven out of the last ten elections, since 1968. I’d like to know what right-wing spinmeister Matt Continetti has to say about the fact that Ken Mehlman, former chair of the party, finally apologized for this strategy three years ago to the NAACP? Where have these suddenly noble-minded Republicans been during the so-called “culture wars” that they revel in, that they thrive on every day, where they split the electorate and siphon off normally Democratic voters with appeals to “red meat” issues like abortion, gay rights, and immigration? They’re good at getting people angry and into the voting booth to vote for them, they know how to win elections – but they can’t govern.

As for Palin, her choice is a perfect example of the consummate cynicism that permeates the Republican electoral strategy. Here’s a person, like Harriet Meiers in regard to a seat on the Supreme Court, who is transparently unqualified for the job at hand; should McCain, who has a Bible-thick medical record of health problems, die or become incapacitated in office, who will look forward to a President Palin? It is merely to garner votes from disaffected Clinton supporters that she has been chosen, which ought to be seen as an insult to the intelligence of those voters.

Palin is to Clinton as Clarence Thomas was to Thurgood Marshall. The Republicans seem to have an endless supply of such characters. One caller to the show put it succinctly when she said that a presidential candidate who doesn’t use the internet combined with a vice presidential candidate who doesn’t believe in science clearly do not deserve election (Plain supports “intelligent design” and doesn’t believe in global heating, an irony if there ever was one, since the hurricane disturbing her convention can be directly related to climate change). She’s against every issue of value to liberal women who supported Clinton. Yet Republicans think (and unfortunately, they may be right) that won’t matter; as they try tapping the anger that Clinton’s supporters feel toward Obama, their feeling that Clinton was slighted, the Republicans just may convince these voters to turn out in droves for McCain. That would illustrate a central problem of U.S. politics: the vulnerability of people to being manipulated into voting against their real interests, economic or otherwise.

Hurricane Gustave may turn out to be a blessing in disguise for the Republicans, giving McCain and Palin the photo-ops they need to effect the pose of “leaders,” with the help of a plainly partisan Republican governor in Louisiana (as pointed out well by one caller this morning). Underneath, they are both empty suits.

PJS are you saying that Sarah Palin has as much experience as Obama or McCain?

Palin does not have the experience to be Vice President or President period. She’s a zealot, a charming zealot but a zealot. We can’t afford this kind of person after 8 years of Bush/Cheney.

The other thing that I am sure people will bring up is Bill Clinton who’s lack of experience was an ‘issue’ when he was running for President.

Clinton’s history is a little more impressive than Palin’s.

Yale Law, Rhodes scholar, Governor of Arkansas for 12 years and so on.

Obama graduated from Harvard Law, was on the law review, taught constitutional law. State legislator, 1997–2004.
U.S. Senator 2004 to present.

Sarah Palin, Miss Wasilla beauty contest, then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant.
Graduated from University of Idaho Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism.
She served two terms on the Wasilla city council from 1992 to 1996.

1996 – 2002 mayor of Wasilla.

Chaired Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission 2003 to 2004.

2006 – present Governor of Alaska.

For me while she seems like a pretty smart person and is capable of swimming in the pond of small state politics, she clearly does not have the amount of experience of Obama.

Also the bottom line is both Clinton and Obama are extremely bright, Palin is not in there league in this area. Sorry am I being elitist? Are people offended?

I don’t know about the rest of the country buy I want the smartest SOB to be president not a person who believes in that the world was created in 5000 years.

I want my presidents to be elite, educated in the best schools, to understand constitutional law and to be able to deal with the problems facing this nation.

Being a hockey mom is all well and good but she is not presidential nor is she a good choice for this country for anything other than what she is doing now. Being governor of Alaska.

It is no surprise to me that this opening broadcast painted the Republicans in poor light. Most every sentence that could have been interpreted as a positive toward McCain and Palin included a “but” or “however” and then the media’s diss on the Republican candidates. There were more mentions of Obama during this broadcast than McCain. Go ahead and count them.
Look at the facts. Palin has more business savy and experience than any of the other three candidates on the presumptive two tickets. She HAS run a government longer (over 730 days) than Obama has served as a Senator (less than 150 days). She has already proven that she can oust the old boys in the Republican party, so you know she can do the same thing in DC.
If Obama wasn’t black (excuse me, an “African-American”), he wouldn’t be at the top of the Dem ticket. AND Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are Americans, without hyphenation. Pure, proud and without familia excuses.
All the media hype and love of Obama’s empty rhetoric from the DNC is now carried over to diss the RNC. And the media will call it “coverage”. The proof I predicted earlier at the start of the coverage of the DNC is now on the table. The media will not give the “other” party (with two highly qualified and sensible candidates) equal time or coverage.

“AND Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin are Americans, without hyphenation. Pure, proud and without familia excuses.”

Are you kidding me? Did you really say this?
Yes you did, I wont dignify this statement with a response other than to say crawl back under that rock you came out of.

For your information the post of Mayor Wasilla is hardly what one could count as real government experience as it is only a ceremonial post. It’s hardly like running a city such as LA or New York or Atlanta.

One reason the RNC is getting bad coverage, George Bush and Dick Cheney, of that’s two reasons.

We have had 8 years of the worse administration in modern history and you wonder why the RNC is getting negative coverage? Of course someone of Dan’s ilk is more likely to see the Bush/Cheney years as golden.
As McCain said recently the economy is sound.

Or this little chestnut:
Phil Gramm tells America to suck it up and stop complaining about the economy.

Yeah the Republicans are the party of ‘change and compassion’ give me a break.

This just in: Palin’s 17-year old, unmarried daughter is five months pregnant.

I guess McCain VP vetters missed that one.

Let’s see how the “morally upright” Republicans spin this one to their advantage.

Thank you, Bryan, for your response to my call this morning. Senator McCain and Governor Palin were invited to Louisiana by the Republican governor and thus given the opportunity to appear presidential in a time of crisis. McCain declares that the emergency situation brought on by Hurricane Gustave is not the time to be Republicans or Democrats but Americans, I could take him a little more seriously if Obama and Biden had also been invited to Louisiana by Republican governor Bobby Jindal. This is just more of the Republicans talking out of both sides of their mouths. McCain scales down the convention and takes his politics to a different venue, New Orleans.

Sarah Palin attempted to make political hay out of her steadfast right to life stand where, knowing what she did about her Downs baby in time to abort, she had the baby anyway because she believes every life is precious.

Whatever your feelings are about abortion, making political hay out of that act should be troublesome to any woman who believes it is her right to terminate a pregnancy.

This has nothing to do with who had the baby, it’s about using what she claims is a personal act to make a political statement with.

The Governor of a State ought not be pushing that agenda or creationism in schools or any of those far right ideas that go against federal laws.

The fact that her 17 year old daughter is now 5 months pregnant is another issue as is the rumor that forced this disclosure: that Sarah didn’t have Trig who was really the daughter’s baby.

All of this stuff can be left aside. This woman is a far right zealot and has no place in national, let alone state politics.

The fact that McCain chose Palin was a shrewd decision to fog this election with side issues that they hope will distract us from the job at hand which is to elect two decent and responsible folks, Obama and Biden who will rebuild our trust, rebuild the country and rebuild the country’s relations with the rest of the world.

If somehow McCain and Palin win this election it will say worlds about the American people as did the re-election of George. W. Bush.

As Pogo once said: “I have seen the problem and it is us.”

Walt Kelly had a wit as sharp as a razor. Pogo was one of the best political cartoons of the 20 century.

Man what I would give to see what he would make of this hash.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Walt Kelly

Thanks Jeff, I know it was something like that.

Brains before Experience

As someone pointed out to me we all have “experience” driving. How many of us make correct and intelligent decisions when we are on the road?
Experience for experience sake means nothing.

Judgement and intelligence on the other hand means you can be placed in any setting and make the correct decisions. In the last 20 years 1/2 the V.P. picks have ended up taking over for the president due to (his) death or removal from office. At 72 y.o. following 2 cancer treatments, McCain has a 40% chance of surviving his 1st term.

McCain has told us that the most important gauge of presidential decision making is who you pick as your running mate. His decision came down to a person we met ONCE and had ONE phone conversation with-the call to invite her to be his running mate. He knew nothing about her except that she would energize the religious right. He didn’t even vet her.

Palin is not only against abortion in all cases, she is against family-planning (birth-control pills, IUD, condoms etc.) and has promoted the old school rthymn method (a.k.a. withdraw). Today, Sen. McCain found out along with the whole world that Palin’s daughter has evidence of the high failure rate assosicated with the “rythmn method”.

Obama graduated from Harvard Law at the top of his class. McCain used his family legacy to get accepted into the naval academy, he graduated 5th from the bottom. In a class of 899, McCain was #894. Palin had Bush level grades and earned a college scholarship from a beauty pagent.

Now these two want to lead our nation, control women’s reproductive organs, teach bible studies in science class, increase tax-cuts to corporations that ship out jobs to sweat shops.

***************NO WAY NO HOW NO MCCAIN************

I was just reading that McCain’s team had not vetted Palin very well if at all.

(Palin now has a private lawyer in a legislative ethics investigation in Alaska into whether she abused her power in dismissing the state’s public safety commissioner.

Palin was a member for two years in the 1990s of the Alaska Independence Party, which has at times sought a vote on whether the state should secede.)

Source: The New York Times.

She was a secessionist! How can they miss this?
I can’t wait for some other chestnuts that are dug up on this zealot.

Now, now McCain has dispatched a team up to Alaska to dig deeper. It’s a little late for that is is not.

This says more about McCain and how he makes important decisions. What does this say about this man?
What does it say about the Republican party?

************ NO WAY, NO HOW, NO MCCAIN!! ***********

“The fact that McCain chose Palin was a shrewd decision to fog this election with side issues ”

It was shrewd, indeed. Brilliant, even. McCain’s fundraising has soared since the anouncement and the pick has excited the party faithful. We’ll know in a few days whether it will have the intended effect of attracting disaffected Hillary supporters.

American voters have created their own lowbrow political culture with their TV watching and their ignorance. The London School of Economics (LSE) has an excellent lecture series of major researchers in the social and behavioral sciences, with downloadable MP3’s of every lecture. Last year James Curran gave a summary of his team’s research on the effect of media consumption and general knowledge of hard and soft news topics. Of the major industrialized nations he studied, Americans scored at the bottom. The introduction and Powerpoint slides are here:

The audio is here:

Now these two want to lead our nation, control women’s reproductive organs, teach bible studies in science class, increase tax-cuts to corporations that ship out jobs to sweat shops.

Spoken like a true coastal liberal!

At the start of the last Presidential campaign I predicted that Bush would defeat Kerry. My friends could not believe that Bush, with all the damage he had done to the US in his first term, could possibly get reelected. But my friends mostly live on the coasts in places like Cambridge and have no clue how people think in the “heartland”.

Take the pregnant teenager, for example. I have relatives in the deep south. Morally, the Bible-belt is way below the licentious liberal northeast – crime, divorce, and teenage pregnancy are common down there. In teenage pregnancies Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia, for instance are all in the top 10, whereas Massachusetts is 40th and Vermont is 49th! So conservatives can relate to Palin – to them this is “family values”!

That’s all fine and good. Palin is a zealot. Teenage pregnancy is a problem it’s not about family values and bromides that elude to this.

McCain is not only running for the office of President of the Bible-belt. The stats that Peter Nelson posted on teenage pregnancies speaks to ignorance and lack of education. If you dive down into the economic structures of our society you will find that the reason for these numbers is poverty, lack of education, and heres the issues that should be talked about, birth control which goes hand in hand with STD’s and the spread of aids.

Palin is against reproductive rights, She does not even believe that a woman should have an abortion if they are raped.

The issues at hand are how do we move ahead as a country and how do we convince people it is in there interest to have government that will work to keep the social and civil structures in good working order so we can live in a civil society.

The Republicans have shown in the last 8 years they don’t believe in this ideal. Katrina was the sum of the effect years of dismantling what was a very well run government service, FEMA. It’s still not functioning well, it’s better, but after Katrina they had no choice.

The Republicans are the party of fear, I am listening to Phillis Shafley now and this is what I hear. Fear, selfishness and greed.

The Republicans are the party of fear, I am listening to Phillis Shafley now and this is what I hear. Fear, selfishness and greed.

You say that like it’s a bad thing.

My point is that coastal, educated, Subaru-driving, latte-drinking liberals have no clue what life or values are like in the heartland. My North Carolina relatives have led lives that make “Deliverance” look like a children’s story, so Palin’s travails with an unmarried pregnant daughter or a DUI husband make her seem endearing. Whether it’s teenage pregnancies or the faith that global warming is part of God’s plan, or the belief that the Russians are on the outskirts of Atlanta so let’s all go to the Walmart to stock up survival supplies, middle-Americans’ world view is so different from that in Cambridge and Berkeley that she might as well be running for president of another country. Please: turn OFF the TV and get out there and see what America is like, because those are the people who will be electing your next President.