Scapegoat, thy name is Palin

I'd be very surprised if she didn't see this coming.


McCain camp trying to scapegoat Palin

Johttp://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20081030/pl_politico/15073;_ylt=AkvFZcgBQT3VLReDtKbtSa8b.3QAh

McCain's campaign is looking for a scapegoat. It is looking for someone to blame if McCain loses on Tuesday.

And it has decided on Sarah Palin.

In recent days, a McCain "adviser" told Dana Bash of CNN: "She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone."

Imagine not taking advice from the geniuses at the McCain campaign. What could Palin be thinking?

Also, a "top McCain adviser" told Mike Allen of Politico that Palin is "a whack job."
Maybe she is. But who chose to put this "whack job" on the ticket? Wasn't it John McCain? And wasn't it his first presidential-level decision?

And if you are a 72-year-old presidential candidate, wouldn't you expect that your running mate's fitness for high office would come under a little extra scrutiny? And, therefore, wouldn't you make your selection with care? (To say nothing about caring about the future of the nation?)
McCain didn't seem to care that much. McCain admitted recently on national TV that he "didn't know her well at all" before he chose Palin.

But why not? Why didn't he get to know her better before he made his choice?
It's not like he was rushed. McCain wrapped up the Republican nomination in early March. He didn't announce his choice for a running mate until late August.

Wasn't that enough time for McCain to get to know Palin? Wasn't that enough time for his crackerjack "vetters" to investigate Palin's strengths and weaknesses, check through records and published accounts, talk to a few people, and learn that she was not only a diva but a whack job diva?

But McCain picked her anyway. He wanted to close the "enthusiasm gap" between himself and Barack Obama. He wanted to inject a little adrenaline into the Republican National Convention. He wanted to goose up the Republican base.

And so he chose Palin. Is she really a diva and a whack job? Could be. There are quite a few in politics. (And a few in journalism, too, though in journalism they are called "columnists.")

As proof that she is, McCain aides now say Palin is "going rogue" and straying from their script. Wow. What a condemnation. McCain sticks to the script. How well is he doing?
In truth, Palin's real problem is not her personality or whether she takes orders well. Her real problem is that neither she nor McCain can make a credible case that Palin is ready to assume the presidency should she need to.

And that undercuts McCain's entire campaign.

This was the deal McCain made with the devil. In exchange for energizing his base by picking Palin, he surrendered his chief selling point: that he was better prepared to run the nation in time of crisis, whether it be economic, an attack by terrorists or, as he has been talking about in recent days, fending off a nuclear war.

"The next president won't have time to get used to the office," McCain told a crowd in Miami on
Wednesday. "I've been tested, my friends, I've been tested."

But has Sarah Palin?

I don't believe running mates win or lose elections, though some believe they can be a drag on the ticket. Lee Atwater, who was George H.W. Bush's campaign manager in 1988, told me that Dan Quayle cost the ticket 2 to 3 percentage points. But Bush won the election by 7.8 percentage points.

So, in Atwater's opinion, Bush survived his bad choice by winning the election on his own.
McCain could do the same thing. But his campaign's bad decisions have not stopped with Sarah Palin. It has made a series of questionable calls, including making Joe the Plumber the embodiment of the campaign.

Are voters really expected to warmly embrace an (unlicensed) plumber who owes back taxes and complains about the possibility of making a quarter million dollars a year?
And did McCain's aides really believe so little in John McCain's own likability that they thought Joe the Plumber would be more likable?

Apparently so. Which is sad.

We in the press make too much of running mates and staff and talking points and all the rest of the hubbub that accompanies a campaign. In the end, it comes down to two candidates slugging it out.

Either McCain pulls off a victory in the last round or he doesn't; and if he doesn't, he has nobody to blame but himself.

Definition of Feminism

The word "feminist" has gotten a really bad reputation in the last decade. Traditionalist men have used the word to describe what they deem to be 'radical' women. AKA, women who fight them on their own grounds. Women who they feel threatened by. Hilary Clinton is such a woman, as is Margaret Thatcher and Gloria Steinem. Though some women are on more zealous in their political movements, this doesn't change the definition of feminism, which Merriam-Webster states as:


Feminist: Function: noun Date: 1895
1 : the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes
2 : organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests


How is equality a bad thing? Women STILL get paid less than men, for doing the same jobs! What the hell makes us less worthy of an equal share of everything? These women and more are simply demanding to be treated as an equal, not an antiquated view of the cute little wife with the sexy gams, but no real smarts. A woman is capable of doing anything a man can do and more, because I'd love to see a man have a baby. Men are not superior, they are equal. It is not a bad thing for women to believe this and I think they all should, because they are worth it.

FOr more information on the history of feminism and women's movements, here is the link to the Britannica website.


http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/724633/feminism#tab=active~checked%2Citems~checked&title=feminism%20--%20Britannica%20Online%20Encyclopedia

The truth about Obama's birth certificate

Please check out the link to the article for the pictures.

Born in the U.S.A.

August 21, 2008
Updated: August 26, 2008

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html


Summary:

In June, the Obama campaign released a digitally scanned image of his birth certificate to quell speculative charges that he might not be a natural-born citizen. But the image prompted more blog-based skepticism about the document's authenticity. And recently, author Jerome Corsi, whose book attacks Obama, said in a TV interview that the birth certificate the campaign has is "fake." We beg to differ. FactCheck.org staffers have now seen, touched, examined and photographed the original birth certificate. We conclude that it meets all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship. Claims that the document lacks a raised seal or a signature are false. We have posted high-resolution photographs of the document as "supporting documents" to this article. Our conclusion: Obama was born in the U.S.A. just as he has always said.


Since we first wrote about Obama's birth certificate on June 16, speculation on his citizenship has continued apace. Some claim that Obama posted a fake birth certificate to his Web page. That charge leaped from the blogosphere to the mainstream media earlier this week when Jerome Corsi, author of a book attacking Obama, repeated the claim in an Aug. 15 interview with Steve Doocy on Fox News.

Corsi: Well, what would be really helpful is if Senator Obama would release primary documents like his birth certificate. The campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website. How is anybody supposed to really piece together his life?
Doocy: What do you mean they have a "false birth certificate" on their Web site?
Corsi: The original birth certificate of Obama has never been released, and the campaign refuses to release it.
Doocy: Well, couldn't it just be a State of Hawaii-produced duplicate?
Corsi: No, it's a -- there's been good analysis of it on the Internet, and it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce.

Corsi isn't the only skeptic claiming that the document is a forgery. Among the most frequent objections we saw on forums, blogs and e-mails are:

The birth certificate doesn't have a raised seal.
It isn't signed.
No creases from folding are evident in the scanned version.
In the zoomed-in view, there's a strange halo around the letters.
The certificate number is blacked out.
The date bleeding through from the back seems to say "2007," but the document wasn't released until 2008.
The document is a "certification of birth," not a "certificate of birth."

Recently FactCheck representatives got a chance to spend some time with the birth certificate, and we can attest to the fact that it is real and three-dimensional and resides at the Obama headquarters in Chicago. We can assure readers that the certificate does bear a raised seal, and that it's stamped on the back by Hawaii state registrar Alvin T. Onaka (who uses a signature stamp rather than signing individual birth certificates). We even brought home a few photographs.

[Picture] The Obama birth certificate, held by FactCheck writer Joe Miller

[Picture] Alvin T. Onaka's signature stamp

[Picture] The raised seal

[Picture] Blowup of text

You can click on the photos to get full-size versions, which haven't been edited in any way, except that some have been rotated 90 degrees for viewing purposes.The certificate has all the elements the State Department requires for proving citizenship to obtain a U.S. passport: "your full name, the full name of your parent(s), date and place of birth, sex, date the birth record was filed, and the seal or other certification of the official custodian of such records." The names, date and place of birth, and filing date are all evident on the scanned version, and you can see the seal above.The document is a "certification of birth," also known as a short-form birth certificate. The long form is drawn up by the hospital and includes additional information such as birth weight and parents' hometowns. The short form is printed by the state and draws from a database with fewer details. The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department. We tried to ask the Hawaii DOH why they only offer the short form, among other questions, but they have not given a response.

The scan released by the campaign shows halos around the black text, making it look (to some) as though the text might have been pasted on top of an image of security paper. But the document itself has no such halos, nor do the close-up photos we took of it. We conclude that the halo seen in the image produced by the campaign is a digital artifact from the scanning process. We asked the Obama campaign about the date stamp and the blacked-out certificate number. The certificate is stamped June 2007, because that's when Hawaii officials produced it for the campaign, which requested that document and "all the records we could get our hands on" according to spokesperson Shauna Daly. The campaign didn't release its copy until 2008, after speculation began to appear on the Internet questioning Obama's citizenship. The campaign then rushed to release the document, and the rush is responsible for the blacked-out certificate number. Says Shauna:

"[We] couldn't get someone on the phone in Hawaii to tell us whether the number represented some secret information, and we erred on the side of blacking it out. Since then we've found out it's pretty irrelevant for the outside world." The document we looked at did have a certificate number; it is 151 1961 - 010641.

[Picture]

Some of the conspiracy theories that have circulated about Obama are quite imaginative. One conservative blogger suggested that the campaign might have obtained a valid Hawaii birth certificate, soaked it in solvent, then reprinted it with Obama's information. Of course, this anonymous blogger didn't have access to the actual document and presents this as just one possible "scenario" without any evidence that such a thing actually happened or is even feasible.
We also note that so far none of those questioning the authenticity of the document have produced a shred of evidence that the information on it is incorrect. Instead, some speculate that somehow, maybe, he was born in another country and doesn't meet the Constitution's requirement that the president be a "natural-born citizen."

We think our colleagues at PolitiFact.com, who also dug into some of these loopy theories put it pretty well: "It is possible that Obama conspired his way to the precipice of the world’s biggest job, involving a vast network of people and government agencies over decades of lies. Anything’s possible. But step back and look at the overwhelming evidence to the contrary and your sense of what’s reasonable has to take over."

In fact, the conspiracy would need to be even deeper than our colleagues realized. In late July, a researcher looking to dig up dirt on Obama instead found a birth announcement that had been published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Sunday, Aug. 13, 1961:

[Picture]

The announcement was posted by a pro-Hillary Clinton blogger who grudgingly concluded that Obama "likely" was born Aug. 4, 1961 in Honolulu.Of course, it's distantly possible that Obama's grandparents may have planted the announcement just in case their grandson needed to prove his U.S. citizenship in order to run for president someday. We suggest that those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat. The evidence is clear: Barack Obama was born in the U.S.A.Update, August 26: We received responses to some of our questions from the Hawaii Department of Health. They couldn't tell us anything about their security paper, but they did answer another frequently-raised question: why is Obama's father's race listed as "African"? Kurt Tsue at the DOH told us that father's race and mother's race are supplied by the parents, and that "we accept what the parents self identify themselves to be." We consider it reasonable to believe that Barack Obama, Sr., would have thought of and reported himself as "African."

It's certainly not the slam dunk some readers have made it out to be.When we asked about the security borders, which look different from some other examples of Hawaii certifications of live birth, Kurt said "The borders are generated each time a certified copy is printed. A citation located on the bottom left hand corner of the certificate indicates which date the form was revised." He also confirmed that the information in the short form birth certificate is sufficient to prove citizenship for "all reasonable purposes."–by Jess Henig, with Joe Miller


Sources:

United States Department of State. "Application for a U.S. Passport." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.
State of Hawaii Department of Health. "Request for Certified Copy of Birth Record." Accessed 20 Aug. 2008.Hollyfield, Amy. "Obama's Birth Certificate: Final Chapter." Politifact.com. 27 Jun. 2008.

Everybody Lies

All politicians lie or "fudge a bit." I guess it just depends how badly, and what it is about. Everyone has their own opinion about the issues closest to their heart.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/factchecking_debate_no_3.html

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/he_lied_about_bill_ayers.html

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_and_infanticide.html

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_alive_baloney.html


Those all show some sort of misrepresentation on both candidates part. The way someone votes usually comes down to who has the most (not all) in common with their own views.

Obama infanticide craziness Part 2

And now...my lengthy response:

Ok, so first thing is first. My brother-in-law may never tell me what I can't talk about. My country is in this war, and my country has freedom of speech. I can talk about whatever I choose. I would not, however, presume to understand what it feels like to be a soldier over there and originally, neither did Dann. He simply stated his belief that we shouldn't be there for 100 years, and I agree. I do not believe that withdrawing troops is "quiting" or "losing" because there is no winning or losing in this case. We went in (supposedly) to help the people of Iraq take back their government and country. I believe that America has trained the Iraqi army to police themselves and that they have the surplus in revenue to carry on themselves. We aren't their keepers; they should learn to govern themselves. A small military presence there for the future (such as the one we still have in Vietnam) would be a good idea, but the rest of the troops should come home.

Next on the agenda: "So which is the greater evil... a baby born ALIVE, being abandoned IN A HOSPITAL and left to die while he is able to be saved, or me having chicken soup for dinner?"
I believe this is a simultaneous dig at Obama's decision that McCain is toting, about how he "voted in favor of late-term abortions" and Dann's veganism. Let' tackle Obama first.
Barack Obama voted against a new state bill to restrict late-term partial birth abortions, and this is why:

"On an issue like partial birth abortion, I strongly believe that the state can properly restrict late-term abortions. I have said so repeatedly. All I've said is we should have a provision to protect the health of the mother, and many of the bills that came before me didn't have that. Part of the reason they didn't have it was purposeful, because those who are opposed to abortion have a moral calling to try to oppose what they think is immoral. Oftentimes what they were trying to do was to polarize the debate and make it more difficult for people, so that they could try to bring an end to abortions overall.

As president, my goal is to bring people together, to listen to them, and I don't think there's any Republican out there who I've worked with who would say that I don't listen to them, I don't respect their ideas, I don't understand their perspective. And my goal is to get us out of this polarizing debate where we're always trying to score cheap political points and actually get things done." http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Barack_Obama_Abortion.htm

He even answered this in the debate; how there was already state laws against late term abortions, but made allowances only in case of the health of the mother. The new bill cut that out, so he voted against it. Even the medical board of this particular state said the bill was not a good idea.

Now, as for the veganism. When a chicken is made into soup, it is already born. It is alive, out in the world and fully capable of feeling pain. A fetus, by lawful definition, is none of these things. That is why Dann doesn't eat chicken soup, but can be pro-choice. What sort of boggles me is that a person who believes that life starts at conception CAN eat animals; which is definitely murder. Don't get me wrong, I am no vegetarian and can't see myself ever being one; but I am also not telling everyone to respect life, then eating it.

I am extremely tired of Pro-life advocates calling Pro-choice "pro-abortion" or "pro-infanticide." That is like calling Pro-life "Pro-unwanted forced pregnancy" or "Pro-die in child birth." Pro-choice is the OPTION of having an abortion, not a requirement! Pro-life is about protecting what they deem to be a child. I don't even like the term Pro-life, as it assumes that Pro-choice doesn't agree with life and that is ridiculous. Pro-choice provides just that...a choice. Pro-life states that you must have a child, no choice or input from the mother and that is unacceptable. I also do not see how a Pro-life advocate can call an abortion murder, but not believe a mother should then be charged for having an illegal one, should Rowe be overturned. If it is murder, wouldn't that make the mother a killer? "Of course not," Sarah Palin said to Katie Couric. This is hypocritical, and really weakens the defense that abortion is murder.

As for the God issue. I think that Dann does use it as a fall back position, as religion in general is something he wholeheartedly disagrees with. However, I believe that Jen does the same thing in reverse. Not everything boils down to religion. Jen has her beliefs, and if God is the reason she has them, then that is her perogative. If Dann disagrees, that is fine too; his reasons just aren't based on a lack of belief, but on his own definition of a moral code.

For the record, I think that Barack Obama is the best thing to happen to this country in a long, sad time. He is smart, eloquent, empathetic and understanding. His charisma helps him to convey his ideas in a way that everyone can understand; he doesn't talk down to anyone.

Also for the record, I did not dislike John McCain the first time he ran. I thought he was a more moderate republican who I just disagreed with on policies. My view on him has changed dramatically in the passed few months. I had serious doubts when he chose Sarah Palin. Her "cuteness" to win votes puts women in politics back 30 years. She has no idea what she is talking about, but likes to scream whatever it is loudly. She is ignorant, for lack of a better word and when I refer to her I will get childish and call her names, because I hate her.

I might have been semi-ok with McCain, but absolutely not with this woman. McCain's recent inflammation of peoples' fear for Obama has made me completely dislike him now. Granted, Lil-Miss-Tool started it with her "terrorism" nonsense, but he could have diffused it. When people at his rally were shouting "Terrorist!" "Karl Marx!" and shockingly "Hang Him!" McCain should have stopped it. Simply stated "We are not saying he himself is a terrorist, we question his choices. He is not Karl Marx, and whomever said 'hang him' should leave immediately." THAT would have impressed me. Instead, his campaign created this monster that they can no longer control, and that is legally RECKLESS ENDANGERMENT. If anyone else had done this publicly, they would have been charged and sued. Obama's life is in danger because of this, and there is no excuse for that.

I really do think that you all know what subjects are touchy for everyone, and it seems to me that they should just be avoided. No one is going to change any one's mind, so why start a fight? How about you both stop sending inflammatory things, and you just get along how you can, as brother and sister?

Love you all.

Obama Infanticide craziness, Part 1

I must use my siblings in this blog and the next. First, here is the argument in question; the next blog will be my opinion.

These are in responses to the video entitled: "A vote for Obama is a vote for infanticide"

Brother #1
Oh Good God. First of all, the many ways to change Obama's name (NObama,PRObama, etc) are ridiculous. So here are a few good ones for McCain: McCAN'T McSame McCorpse
and I love that whole "Obama is close to OSAMA!" Well, Palin is 2 letters away from STALIN. So there.

Now. The debate about abortion is one that will go on for many years, so to say a vote for Obama is infanticide could easily be turned into "A vote for McCain is mass murder", since he wants to keep us fighting in Iraq even if it takes "100 years". The fact that you kill more living cells in your body while picking your nose than during an early (when you SHOULD) abortion doesn't
really matter because to those who get their panties in a bunch about it, it's all about the religious aspect. God endorsed infanticide when he killed all the firstborn didn't he? Oh wait....we'll just gloss over that.

Well, you know, "God" aborts babies all the time. That's what a miscarriage
is. The Body's way (or God's if you prefer) way of telling you "Nope. This
pregnancy isn't happening". Now, since almost 15% of pregnancies end in
abortion, it seems to me that maybe you should be boycotting God, since he
aborts babies more than anyone else single-handedly.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brother-in-Law's response:
Until you come over to Iraq and serve your country. Don't speak about Iraq. People and this includes my immediate family have no idea what goes on over here. Even the media has really now idea what goes on over here. Evrytime the media comes here they get the "Dog and Pony Show". So if McCain is voted President and I have to keep coming over here, I will and I know theres a hell of a lot of soldiers willing to do the same. I would much rather fight terrorist over here in Iraq, then at home in the United States. GOD BLESS AMERICA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sister's Response:
So which is the greater evil... a baby born ALIVE, being abandoned IN A HOSPITAL and left to die while he is able to be saved, or me having chicken soup for dinner? Secondly, PLEASE get your facts straight. No abortions happen before a heartbeat because the heart beats at around 18 days from CONCEPTION, about the time you might wonder IF you are pregnant. No one said
anything about God in the original post... I wonder if maybe YOU don't use him as an excuse?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Brother's Response again:
"The baby's heart beat can be detected as early as 8 weeks but almost always by 10 weeks." "Fetuses are not capable of feeling pain at the beginning of the fetal stage, and will not be able to feel pain until the third trimester" ---The American Pregnancy Association. THAT ASIDE...

"So which is the greater evil... a baby born ALIVE, being abandoned IN A HOSPITAL and left to die while he is able to be saved, or me having chicken soup for dinner?"

I don't really know what you were trying to say here. I assume you were alluding to my veganism again, but the argument doesn't really hold any water. A baby being born alive and left for dead (so NOT aborted, but abandoned) versus eating chicken soup. Well, while I disagree with eating meat...I don't eat babies. I don't see your point here.

Yes, I DID bring up God. I clearly stated that the reason I did was because being pro-life goes hand-in-hand with being religious. It's the religious aspect that gets people so fired up about it. Whether or not Obama gets elected or McCain gets elected, abortions will keep happening, because they are legal, save for partial-birth which are and SHOULD be illegal.

Now in asking me to always get my facts straight, you have a knack for writing random blog posts, emails, or posts that spout horrendous allegations (such as the infancticide remark), which are both untruthful and massiveley embellished. Then, when someone disagrees with you, your response is usually "Well YOU don't KNOW, all you know about is what Jon Stewart tells you!". It's getting old.

A vote for Obama is NOT INFANTICIDE. If someone votes for Obama it does not in ANY way, mean that person WANTS TO KILL BABIES. That it the most extreme example of boiling everything down to black and white. but these subjects, much like the ones I would retort to Jason about the army and the republican party, goes by the traditional thought process of "doing what you're told, even if it sounds ridiculous". The army kills people everyday, often people whose danger to America and the soldiers themselves is questionable. The U.S. army often kills civilians and then says "Whoops, our bad". So the whole throw yourself in front of the tank for babies" argument is more than a little hypocritical.

Cry me a river Cane

This was me response to a man, Mr. Cane, in a discussion room about the presidential race. He doesn’t trust anyone and said:

“I came from a hard life, but I went to school and worked to get a get ahead. My wife and I make a good living, but under Obama’s tax plan we would get taxed more to help people who make less. Why should I care about them? I shouldn’t have to pay more taxes for people too lazy to get a job. They can go to school and get out just like I did and make something of themselves. I’m voting McCain because he isn’t all about taking money from those who earned it and giving it to those who didn’t.”

My response:

Mr. Cane, the fact that you graduated college these passed eight years is a step up; not many Americans can, even with loans. Perhaps you could use a little more schooling.

Why should you care?? Because you LIVE HERE. You are an American sir, and that used to mean something. It didn't always mean that we are the world's babysitter or cowboy with an itchy trigger finger. People who love America never used to be ashamed of it; it used to mean that people could come here to make a better life for themselves. Many still believe that, but they aren't getting any help from the government that is supposed to be working for them.

In an ideal world, a small tax increase to a specific group might sound unfair, but look at where we are. There is no way to get America out of the Bush-dug hole it is in. We can't just ask other countries for money (even though we have tried); no one respects us anymore. If you qualify for Obama’s increase, you must make over $250,000 a year…so you aren’t exactly hurting. Taxing the people who have gotten rich buy milking the rest of us is a good way to undo a bit of the horrible damage. The middle and lower class have been paying them for eight years and seen nothing but failure...it's our turn for a chance to fix this mess.

Simply put, we are in the shit. McCain isn't going to make it better and Palin is not only completely unqualified, she is dangerous. What little information she has she wields like a kid with his Dad's gun, no matter who she is supposed to be aiming at. When she has no answers, she makes shit UP. Is that really who you want trying to fix this mess? I suppose it doesn’t matter to you anyway. After all, you don’t care.

Who you callin' a Maverick?

Who You Callin’ a Maverick?

By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: October 4, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/weekinreview/05schwartz.html?no_interstitial

There’s that word again: maverick. In Thursday’s vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, the Republican candidate, used it to describe herself and her running mate, Senator John McCain, no fewer than six times, at one point calling him “the consummate maverick.”

But to those who know the history of the word, applying it to Mr. McCain is a bit of a stretch — and to one Texas family in particular it is even a bit offensive.

“I’m just enraged that McCain calls himself a maverick,” said Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio native who proudly carries the name of a family that has been known for its progressive politics since the 1600s, when an early ancestor in Boston got into trouble with the law over his agitation for the rights of indentured servants.

In the 1800s, Samuel Augustus Maverick went to Texas and became known for not branding his cattle. He was more interested in keeping track of the land he owned than the livestock on it, Ms. Maverick said; unbranded cattle, then, were called “Maverick’s.” The name came to mean anyone who didn’t bear another’s brand.

Sam Maverick’s grandson, Fontaine Maury Maverick, was a two-term congressman and a mayor of San Antonio who lost his mayoral re-election bid when conservatives labeled him a Communist. He served in the Roosevelt administration on the Smaller War Plants Corporation and is best known for another coinage. He came up with the term “gobbledygook” in frustration at the convoluted language of bureaucrats.

This Maverick’s son, Maury Jr., was a firebrand civil libertarian and lawyer who defended draft resisters, atheists and others scorned by society. He served in the Texas Legislature during the McCarthy era and wrote fiery columns for The San Antonio Express-News. His final column, published on Feb. 2, 2003, just after he died at 82, was an attack on the coming war in Iraq.
Terrellita Maverick, sister of Maury Jr., is a member emeritus of the board of the San Antonio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

Considering the family’s long history of association with liberalism and progressive ideals, it should come as no surprise that Ms. Maverick insists that John McCain, who has voted so often with his party, “is in no way a maverick, in uppercase or lowercase.”

“It’s just incredible — the nerve! — to suggest that he’s not part of that Republican herd. Every time we hear it, all my children and I and all my family shrink a little and say, ‘Oh, my God, he said it again.’ ”

“He’s a Republican,” she said. “He’s branded.”

Palin’s Alternate Universe

This is an opinion article from the New York Times, and I think it does an excellent job voicing the real concerns about Sarah Palin. I do not like the woman at all, but in the end how I feel about her personally isn't the issue. She is in no way qualified to be the Vice President. She is barely qualified to be a Governor.

People used to joke about what would happen if Quayle became president...that is nothing compared to this. I have no doubt that she would kill in a PTA meeting, but she is no barracuda. She can't pretend she is a "gosh-dernit, hockey Mom married to Joe Sixpack" and then try to convince us that she is as tough as Hillary Clinton.

Electing her personifies everything the first woman Vice President should NOT be. I am taking some liberties here, but just imagine her meeting foreign leaders saying things like, "Say it ain't so Dmitry!" and "Well, I'm just gonna have to disagree with you there Mr. Zardairy" (Asif Ali Zardari, president of Pakistan). She blames the media for anything she says wrong, as if she meant to sounds stupid as a joke. Um, why not just not make a joke about important issues? Because she has no idea what she is talking about, so she tries to be cute instead.

I have no doubt that choosing a female running mate was a smart move by McCain, but why her? Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas has been in the political arena since 1972 and is amply qualified. I don't like her views personally either, but at least she isn't...let's face it, a total tool.



Sarah Palin is the perfect exclamation point to the Bush years.

by BOB HERBERT
Published: October 3, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/opinion/04herbert.html?em

We’ve lived through nearly two terms of an administration that believed it could create its own reality:

“Deficits don’t matter.” “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job.” “Those weapons of mass destruction must be somewhere.”

Now comes Ms. Palin, a smiling, bubbly vice-presidential candidate who travels in an alternate language universe. For Ms. Palin, such things as context, syntax and the proximity of answers to questions have no meaning.

In her closing remarks at the vice-presidential debate Thursday night, Ms. Palin referred earnestly, if loosely, to a quote from Ronald Reagan. He had warned that if Americans weren’t vigilant in protecting their freedom, they would find themselves spending their “sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in America when men were free.”
What Ms. Palin didn’t say was that the menace to freedom that Reagan was talking about was Medicare. As the historian Robert Dallek has pointed out, Reagan “saw Medicare as the advance wave of socialism, which would ‘invade every area of freedom in this country.’ ”

Does Ms. Palin agree with that Looney Tunes notion? Or was this just another case of the aw-shucks, darn-right, I’m-just-a-hockey-mom governor of Alaska mouthing something completely devoid of meaning?

Here’s Ms. Palin during the debate: “Say it ain’t so, Joe! There you go pointing backwards again ... Now, doggone it, let’s look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education, and I’m glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and God bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right?”

If Governor Palin didn’t like a question, or didn’t know the answer, she responded as though some other question had been asked. She made no bones about this, saying early in the debate: “I may not answer the questions the way that either the moderator or you want to hear.”
The problem with Ms. Palin’s candidacy is that John McCain might actually win this election, and then if something terrible happened, the country could be left with little more than an exclamation point as president.

After Ms. Palin had woven one of her particularly impenetrable linguistic webs, Joe Biden turned to the debate’s moderator, Gwen Ifill, and said: “Gwen, I don’t know where to start.”
Of course he didn’t know where to start because Ms. Palin’s words don’t mean anything. She’s all punctuation.

This is such a serious moment in American history that it’s hard to believe that someone with Ms. Palin’s limited skills could possibly be playing a leadership role. On the day before the debate, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, made an urgent appeal for more troops, saying the additional “boots on the ground,” as well as more helicopters and other vital equipment, were “needed as quickly as possible.”

The morning after the debate, the Labor Department announced that the employment situation in the U.S. had deteriorated even more than experts had expected. The nation lost nearly 160,000 jobs in September, more than double the monthly losses in July and August.
Conditions are probably worse than even those numbers indicate because the government’s statistics do not yet reflect the response of employers to the credit crisis that has taken such a hold in the last few weeks.

Where is the evidence that Governor Palin even understands these complex and enormously challenging problems? During the debate she twice referred to General McKiernan as “McClellan.” Neither Ms. Ifill nor Senator Biden corrected her.

But after Senator Biden suggested that John McCain’s answer to the nation’s energy problems was to “drill, drill, drill,” Ms. Palin promptly pointed out, as if scoring a point, that “the chant is ‘Drill, baby, drill!’ ”

How’s that for perspective? The credit markets are frozen. Our top general in Afghanistan is dialing 911. Americans are losing jobs by the scores of thousands. And Sarah Palin is making sure we know that the chant is “drill, baby, drill!” not “drill, drill, drill.”

John McCain has spent most of his adult life speaking of his love for his country. Maybe he sees something in Sarah Palin that most Americans do not. Maybe he is aware of qualities that lead him to believe she’d be as steady as Franklin Roosevelt in guiding the U.S. through a prolonged economic downturn. Maybe she’d be as wise and prudent in a national emergency as John Kennedy was during the Cuban missile crisis.

Maybe Senator McCain has reason to believe that it would not be the most colossal of errors to put Ms. Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.

He’s got just four weeks to share that insight with the rest of us.