For a couple of days. Tomorrow I go to the doctor for one of those “exams”. You know the kind where you need someone to drive you home afterwards, because you are all doped up on anesthetics? Where did 7 years go?
So while I’m horizontal and God willing its only for a short while (I always get nervous when doctors administer anesthesia on me…..), here is a homework assignment:
Most people can name the Presidents, or most of them, few can name the Vice Presidents. This little video will compare Sarah Palin to every Vice President in US history. As Andrew Sullivan points out, “Well worth 12 minutes of your time. The Palin nomination is without historical precedent for her total lack of any salient qualifications as well as her refusal to engage the press in any meaningful way in a national election campaign. Truly surreal and utterly without precedent. Just listen to Lessig go through the history of the vice-presidents.” If you don’t have the time just remember this number-2 out of 46. That’s Sarah Palin’s rank from the bottom in this Veepstakes.
No quiz-we all just flunk the course if we all guess wrong because the electorate is in love with the myth-without understanding the reality of who she really is. “Just folks” my rear. Her story is not my story-nor is it most of America’s. Try telling that to the throngs who checked their good sense at the door.
Well not me. I watched a PBS special on Reagan last night-and anyone who thinks of Palin as a female Ronald Reagan, needs to go back and review the details of Regan’s life. She does not deserve to tie Reagan’s shoes-much less be that close to the office he once held. I shall not allow his memory to be disgraced by such a comparison.
Get thee back to Anchorage!
Good grief Skippy,
Her sole office is to preside over the senate (that thing with an approval rating of less than 9% of Americans) and cast a tie breaking vote in the unusual event that a senate vote ends in a tie. That’s a job that takes a nuclear rocket scientist.
Qualifications for this office…see lightening, hear thunder. I guess that makes her more qualified than the governor of NY who is blind.
Honestly, take a couple of deep breaths and think. What kind of presidential nominee selects a VP who is manifestly brighter, smarter, more qualified and more competent for the number 2 slot on the ticket? They’re all complete hacks of course. Obama, being the complete empty suit, had to really stretch to find anybody more obtuse and ignorant than himself and picked a gaffster named Biden. McCain, being a former navy captain, had a hell of a lot of depth on his own and didn’t have to draw his number 2 out of the shallow end of the gene pool. He could go deep and did. (you gonna reach for the metaphors?)
Roosevelt didn’t respect Truman and Kennedy despised Johnson and we all know how Ike felt about Nixon. This is a reversal of the naval model for the number 2 job. The number 1 guys don’t want Darth working for them….well, except for Bush who has always been able to relax by the pool when the BDS types wanted to impeach him because all he had to do was murmur, “that’s OK, I’m sure Cheney’s up to the job once you impeach me….” or words to that effect.
Curtis, If Mcain were not a rather old 72 with a history of malignant melanoma – a very deadly skin cancer by the way- I might be inclined to agree with you. Alas McCain is an old 72 and he has had a melanoma. Read the other day that with his medical history the is a 30-40 % probability he will not survive a 4 year term. Actuarily that sounds about right.
Palin abject lack of any qualifying experience should give any rational voter serious pause and reflection before pulling the lever or punching a chad.
Curtis, If Mcain were not a rather old 72 with a history of malignant melanoma – a very deadly skin cancer by the way- I might be inclined to agree with you. Alas McCain is an old 72 and he has had a melanoma. Read the other day that with his medical history the is a 30-40 % probability he will not survive a 4 year term. Actuarily that sounds about right.
Palin’s abject lack of any qualifying experience should give any rational voter serious pause and reflection before pulling the lever or punching a chad.
Ignorance is curable.
As is melanomia IF caught early.
Won’t Palin have advisors?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com has an article by Trudy Rubin
on Bob Gates.
ALL candidates should heed his sage advice when it comes to foreign policy.
Palin is a created image-one that eventually is going to get exposed. Hopefully sooner rather than later. I stick to my assertion in that she is a female version of Spiro Agnew.
She is a unique creature of Alaska politics-and only could be elected in a state like Alaska, a state that is 75% white and awash in federal dollars-many of which she did the requisite groveling to get.
As for Biden, well at least he is out there making gaffes, unlike Palin who is being kept in a media black out. And why is that? Because for McCain,this is about creating a myth about this noble and “brilliant ” polictician of the people.
I see just another pushy, ambitious, career woman who is lucky enough to have a support system in place to allow her to go live her dreams. Most women are not so lucky and had to make real choices in their lives.
Yes-I don’t like her. I will admit that and like Tina Fey, I want her to fade away on November 5th.
Curtis, In my almost 40 years of practice of medicine I have seen many changes. One thing has not changed is how deadly and lethal melanoma can be. Cannot tell you how many “early” “Cured” cases of melanoma I have seen come back with a vengance many years later. 5, 10 20 years later.
If your friendly neighborhood insurance compan y will not touch you with a personal history of cancer, why would a rational human risk the country with an unknown. McCain made a very unwise decision with her.
Foggy,
I’m no fan of McCain. He is, however, the lesser of two evils. He has left deep tracks behind him. His record pretty much points the direction on where he’ll go on most issues. BHO, so far as I can determine, has left no tracks and no records so all I can only judge him by are his friends. All of them now appear to have been tossed under the bus; all of them. He is a man who doesn’t have a single friend in the world that can stand the light of day. J. Wright, the priest, his grandmother, Ayers, Ayers’ wife whatshername Powers, his economic advisor who told the Canadians that BHO was just fibbing when he told us that he was going to renegotiate NAFTA.
You speak to McCains medical health as if you are an expert. I sure hope that your first name isn’t Gary. If it is, than I’m the Curtis you knew. McCain graduated from a military academy a year behind my father and both of them fought in the same war. My father wasn’t tortured for 5 years and he’s in great shape. He’s still out there skiing and sailing and he’s good for another 25 years minimum.
I’m not sure I understand your point about Palin’s lack of executive experience since she is just the backup to the GOP nominee although she has 10 time’s BHO’s experience. I’d be obliged if you’d point out any features in BHO’s background that make him more qualified than Palin to be President. You know, just anything. Go ahead, I can wait while you come up with some sort of answer that makes any kind of sense.
Skippy,
You speak of her being kept in a media blackout. From all the “real” evidence, this is no shrinking violet. Her not speaking to the drive by media is just another way of giving them the finger and it has driven them into a frenzy. Perhaps you caught her interview with Charlie Gibsen where the DELIBERATELY edited her responses to make her appear to be an utter idiot? Now why would you subject yourself to that again if you don’t have too? It’s pretty obvious that she doesn’t have to and enjoys a very very old privilege.
Remember the media’s outrage when Palin’s email was hacked? They had conniptions. Only, it wasn’t over the hacking and invasion of privacy. No, it was over whether or not she needed to be investigated for conducting state business using private email. It reminded me of the perpetual outrage expressed by morons in NOLA that reservists, the bastards, kept violating their directives and using personal email to conduct NAVRES affairs. Of course, back then, NOLA totally failed to provide any NAVRES with email accounts. The way the press was carrying on you’d think they were experts on Alaskan public sunshine laws. Those idiots probably think such laws are the same for all 58 states. Me, I think the press is mostly a bunch of venal idiots and 97% in the tank for Obama.
She has done 3 interviews-one of which was a Hannity puff piece which does not count.
She was asked a question by a reporter at the UN. McCain’s handlers intervened.
I read the Gibson transcript. Edited or not she still sounded like a strident person who had no knowledge of world affairs. She sound even more like an idiot in her interview with Couric.
She is running for an office that as Foggy points out she could possibly move up from.
She does not yet deserve that honor. I’ll pass on a female version of Millard Fillmore. She wants to play in a man’s world, she has to play by men’s rules. Right now she is basically saying, that she can say any lie in the world, but she can’t be attacked back because it is somehow sexist.
As far as giving the media the finger-one can do that-but it usually backfires on you in the end. And as an added bonus it confirms the perception that she was not vetted. And that she really is not qualified.
The media is what it is and there are plenty of media outlets that are in the tank for McCain. It is up to the consumer to get the coverage he wants.
Curtis,
Name is not Gary. As far as being a “expert” I do not meet the usal defination: someone from more than 50 miles away with a briefcase and box of slides or in todays world a laptop and a canned powerpoint. But I have been actively engaged in medical practice for almost 40 years. My practice has extremly close ties with evaluation, detection and follow up of cancer patients.
Like you I am no big fan of BHO. Fact is McCain could have chosen from a wide universe of VP candidates. Most of them qualified by history of experience to assume mantle of POTUS. He instead chose someone who would appeal to his radical right wing religious base. Even there he couild have chosen a qualified by experience person. Even found a female had he looked. Instead he went for a cute out of left field choice with an almost laughable lack of worthwhile experience. He thereby emasulated his claim BHO was not qualified.
Again were he not old and not have history of melanoma no big deal. Chose Palin. However not the case. The risk is much too high to vest the future of the country on a person whose sole claim to fame is being a hockey mom. I fear BHO maybe the lesser of the evils presented.
Foggy,
Gary is an MD and former father-in-law and just retired after about 40 years in nuclear medicine.
I like Palin and think McCain made a good choice for VP. I think she is more qualified than the completely unqualified O’bama or the transparent idiot he chose for VP. She will also be there, like Cheney, guarding the president’s flanks when the McCain Derangement Syndrome sweeps the land and they start muttering about impeachment and you know they will. They can’t help themselves anymore. I’m actually looking forward to watching the spittle fly as they tear themselves apart in their frenzy and the slowly dawning realization that if McCain goes, then Palin steps up to the plate.
I don’t know a lot about her but she took on big oil and won. She beat not one but two incumbents for the governor’s job. She started cleaning up her own party. That email invasion impressed me. She reminded me of Bush’s “friend” who had been taping their phone calls for years and then decided that they needed to be aired before the last election. In the few clips I heard, Bush talking in private sounded just like Bush in public but a lot more articulate. He appeared to be a man who’s private morality matched his public persona. I’d say, imagine somebody hacked into Obama’s email account and the kind of filth that one would find there as this man of no moral convictions negotiated on how he would trim things in order to broaden his appeal just enough to avoid pissing off the base while attracting more useful idiots just long enough to win the prize. But of course, that is impossible since the man is evidently too cunning to leave anything in writing that might be used against him.
Curtis,
Time will tell. Palin MAY turn out just great. BHO may be outstanding. We just do not know. You are more willing to gamble than I.
Just finished reading the STRATFOR analysis of the foreign policy situation the next president will face and the options open to each. This is placed on a historical backdrop from which each individual and party comes.
Highly recommend reading all four parts.
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/238172/98643f4faf/542001904/fb45163316/
Who is your ex F-I-L? Is possible know him or of him. Skippy has my e-mail.
Charles
Charles,
I can’t seem to find skippy’s email address anywhere.
He worked at Providence St Vincent Med Center? in Portland for decades.
Come to think of it, you may well know him. Great guy.
Curtis
There is a link to my e-mail on the bottom of the left side of the page.
As for Palin taking on big oil-she did no such thing. She did impose a windfall profits tax something McCain is opposed to and Obama supports. As for Palins election as governor she was also very, very lucky.
Watching the performance of McCain with the bailout negotiations-I’m very dissapointed. He pulled a political stunt-for no good purpose.
Another consideration re: Palin’s selection. I hear a lot of discussion as to how “qualified” she is. How her “experience” trumps Obama’s etc.
One major, big time difference is Obama was vetted by the public for a long time. He was chosen by the voters who right or wrong- history will tell- thought he was best qualified. McCain similarly chosen.
Palin has not been vetted or scrutinized or seriously evaluated by the public. She is the proverbial pig in a poke.
Her choice by McCain and his apparent failure to be constructive in the present financial crises really cast doubts on his ability or suitability to be President.
Sit back and rationally look at the whole picture. Take your personal agendas and ideology out of the equation and a McCain presidency looks bleaker everyday.
Or a pig to be poked. 😉
Could not resist.
Obama vetted?!
His “God damn America!” priest of 20 years, now under the bus.
His wife, “proud of America for the first time in my life”, in seclusion.
His back up preacher who could not restrain his anti-american ranting.
His foreign policy advisor fired after traveling to England to call Hillary a monster, fired
His economic advisor who privately told his Canadian counterparts that Obama was fibbing when he said he was going to revise NAFTA, fired.
His VP selection committee headed by the guy who brought us the current financial disaster, fired.
He is more than a friend of Bill Ayers and his terrorist wife who have never repented and only lament that they didn’t put more bombs in places like Fort Dix dance halls.
Voted present 130 times as an Illinois legislator. Does he have trouble reaching a decision?
His sole achievement in political life seems to be that the Daley machine put him in office in Illinois where he ran for Congress and lost and then ran for Senate and won because the Republican candidate he was up against suddenly found his divorce records unsealed and the facts came out about his weird sexual practices as reported by his wife as they went through a divorce and he was replaced by an absolute moron at the last minute.
Sure, McCain’s tenure, should he win will be pretty bleak. I’m no McCain fan but I regard him as the lesser of 2 evils. I happen to think McCain will stab me in the back but that’s nothing compared to what I think will happen if Obama wins, Pelosi remains Speaker and Reid still heads the Senate. That is the sure and certain route for absolute and terminal disaster.
Seriously, have you noticed how Obama does not have a single friend or champion who has known him for say, 20 years who can get up on the podium with him and tell us what a great guy he is and how much he did for him/her? Not one!
Vetted my ass.
Curtis,
I think you have raised a great point-mainly that really qualifed candidates cannot get nominated, for both the impossible standards we set for the candidates and the off track primary system.
If McCain was so bad-why could not a “better” conservative candidate get elected? Fred Thompson was supposed to bet that guy-but more Republicans voted for McCain. I personally believe that was partially because there are still enough moderate Republicans like me who are uncomfortable with the conservative agenda-and all the stupid RINO nonsense. I think the same is true in the Democratic party. There are people who are uncomfortable with Obama, but ask themselves why can’t they have a better candidate at the top. (Biden is better than Obama in my opinion). Reaon? Feminists and Gay rights advocates.
The primary system is broken. The primaries create our choices. Garbage in =garbage out.
That said-I liked McCain in 2000. But this McCain is nothing like that guy.
Skippy-san,
I think it’s more than the primary process that is broken. It is the main stream press and the left wing press and all those alleged journalists, editors, pundits, talking heads who cannot contain their hatred for anything on the right. If conservatives, a true minority try to run a genuine conservative then they get the Palin treatment from the very outset of the primary season. They get demonized not by their fellow contenders but by the press. And as the press points out how little support that conservative guy has and constantly refer to their polls showing the people what a loser he is and how little chance he has to win, why the money dries up, the donations whither away and he trails the pack until the dim bulb finally gives up and admits that he can’t win. What happens next? Why the press take down the next most conservative candidate until the same thing happens. Result? No more genuine conservatives bother to put themselves forward for their party’s nomination.
I’ve seen where you’ve written that you don’t really see all that much bias in the press but I think that’s because you tend to agree with what you see in the press. It is very hard to admit that the other party has a case for bias when you cannot doubt the reasonableness of your own position and therefore prefer to dismiss claims of bias as ________ (insert whatever word you like).
What fascinates me is the intolerance of those anywhere to the left of McCain. How many times have you heard of a liberal or progressive speaker who’d been invited to an event but got yelled and screamed out and left, unable to make the speech. It happens every day to conservatives but never seems to go the other way.
Have you noticed how the major blogs of the left are vicious cesspools of hate and intolerance. They read like Islamic Jihad or Al Queada when they write about or talk about the great satan. Did you see the little clip on youtube of a couple of dozen McCain supporters walking around the Upper West Side in Manhattan and what they endured from people that didn’t know them?
Madness.
Fred didn’t win because he didn’t play. It was pretty clear to everybody that his heart wasn’t in it. He wasn’t dedicated to getting in and winning. He strolled on and he strolled off without ever working up a sweat or trying to build an organization.
I see the same thing on the right that you see on the left. An equal number of right wing blogs are cesspools of hate and intolerance. Malkin’s and her friends being among them. The intolerance of anywhere to the right of Obama is equal to that on the left. Again-where you sit determines what you see. I will stand by my assertion that there are just as many hackneyed rightwing reporters as there are left wing ones.
“Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices – just recognize them.” – Edward R. Murrow . I can watch a CNN reporter and still gain useful info from them-although I know their personal sympathies may law elsewhere besides mine. What I cannot abide though are those reporters-primarily at Fox News who just will not look at the facts in spinning the truth.
And the fact is about Palin-she is playing over her head this time. She’s too early on the national stage-and she will pay a price for it. Same as Agnew.
Skippy,
From Investors Business Daily
“Putting Money Where Mouths Are: Media Donations Favor Dems 100-1”
By WILLIAM TATE | Posted Wednesday, July 23, 2008 4:20 PM PT
“An analysis of federal records shows that the amount of money journalists contributed so far this election cycle favors Democrats by a 15:1 ratio over Republicans, with $225,563 going to Democrats, only $16,298 to Republicans .
Two-hundred thirty-five journalists donated to Democrats, just 20 gave to Republicans — a margin greater than 10-to-1. An even greater disparity, 20-to-1, exists between the number of journalists who donated to Barack Obama and John McCain.
Searches for other newsroom categories (reporters, correspondents, news editors, anchors, newspaper editors and publishers) produces 311 donors to Democrats to 30 donors to Republicans, a ratio of just over 10-to-1. In terms of money, $279,266 went to Dems, $20,709 to Republicans, a 14-to-1 ratio.”
Seriously, the data on press bias are irrefutable. You countered with FOX, which is kind of a joke. I this on in my office (navy) for the last 3 years in background, no volume but it was newsworthy for just the first couple of hours of the day and then it was pure Oprah crap. The nighttime lineup is totally not news and not watchable. It’s talk TV. But virtually every print newspaper, all 3 networks and PBS/NPR are totally in the tank for the democrat. Now good folks like you like at data like that and declare, “why that doesn’t make them biased. It just means they’re liberals and progressive but that has nothing to do with how they write the news.”
So far as Malkin goes, who cares really? I sometimes take a look from an INSTY link at Malkin story but I’ve never seen her advocate that some democrat should be killed or his family should be smeared or that somebody really needs a good gangrape. That really does seem to be the sole purview of the left. Please, let’s not equate nazis and the other bigots with conservatives and the right. Nazis and their ilk are just democrats under another standard. The left tries to make people confused by making the claim that nazis are somehow of the right when they’re identical to progressives but they have an attitude about race.
A conservative wants nothing more than government as promised under the US Constitution. Nothing more, nothing less and of course every time this comes up some jackass mentions slavery and you’re forced to look at them and just wonder how they can so utterly reject the idea that sometimes a universal declaration of human rights requires a little compromise with both parties hoping that they will win in the end through time and persuasion. It was the conservatives and the republicans who opposed slavery over the century and democrats who upheld their right to own their fellow man. Nowadays, they don’t come out and admit that they prefer slavery but you and I are indentured servants to a government hostile to civil liberties that takes every dime we make every year until Tax Freedom Day and that comes later every year. How much longer can that go on before we admit that we’re nothing more than the servants of the state?
I suspect that 100% of the 40% of the people in this country that pay NO taxes vote democrat every election and why wouldn’t they? I’m not a winger, not all that religious, believe in the golden rule and just happen to believe that what’s mine is mine (except alimony and child support and I’ll be done with alimony in a little over a year).
I’d submit that if the media is liberal-it has a lot to do with why people enter journalism. They want to accomplish something bigger than themselves.
I am sure when you heard that statement you laughed out loud. But if I could now-I’d be a writer and a reporter in a second. But sadly, its a young man’s game.
I want more from my government than just what is in the Constitution. I want it to use its resources to promote the betterment of the quality of life of its citizens. I reject a Hobbesian approach that says that some must be cast aside for the good of the others. I want it to build things, achieve things, I want to have the services I need provided. I believe there are things governments must do. I believe that health can and should be available to all and that you should not have to pay and arm and a leg for it.
I don’t mind paying taxes so much as long as I am seeing a return on my investment. If this country had decent public transportation, a Social Security system that worked, health care that worked, and was exploring and inventing-it would be worth it. But we are not. Rich bastards are getting richer and the opportunities for me to join their ranks are diminishing.
People rave about how the US is better than Europe. It is in some things-but I admire the Europeans for recognizing that there is more to life than work. I’d like 6 weeks off each year. I like the city states in Asia for the same reason-plus the women.
Skippy,
Sure, you want to be Walter Duranty. You agree that some must must be cast aside for the good of the others. (Those damned Kulaks must pay~!)
I want the government to totally butt out of quality of life. I encourage the pursuit of happiness but I don’t see anything that says that my government has a mandate to steal from me in order to gaurantee outcome. If you read that old piece of paper, you don’t see anything at all in there that says that the government has an obligation to provide for losers. That’s what charity is for and nobody on earth gives more to charity than Americans.
I defy you to show me one single American that went to any hospital and was denied health care. (in the last 40 years please. Let’s not go back to the democrat south’s refusal to provide equal access to healthcare for blacks)
The whole complete reason for the Constitution was to reserve to the citizens of the republic certain rights. You appear keen to set them aside for the betterment of mankind. Can I ask you to throw an honest revolution if you’re going to overturn my rights under the Constitution? Mine/ours were reserved to us and should not be transferred without bloodshed.