The Palin War is getting ugly

[akdiver 3]

Dem: Not Having Abortion Is Palin's 'Primary Qualification'

ABC News' Teddy Davis, Bret Hovell, and Arnab Datta report: A Democratic Party leader said Wednesday that Sarah Palin's "primary qualification" for the vice presidency is that she has not had an abortion, prompting Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to charge that Democrats are trying to "demean" the governor of Alaska and "wipe out" all of her accomplishments because she "disagrees with the NARAL crowd on one issue."

[GaryC 7]

Yeah, pretty much. Even the Canadian press is getting into the act. This is from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations web site. I mean really, this goes way over the top.

A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention

Last Updated: Friday, September 5, 2008 | 8:48 PM ET

By Heather Mallick, special to CBC News

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

So why do it?

It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.

But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating themselves and reading columns like this one? I'm a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn't even female really. She's a type, and she comes in male form too.

John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it first. It's safer than "white trash" but I'll pluck safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.

Doyle's job includes watching a lot of reality television and he's well-versed in the backstory. White trash — not trailer trash, that's something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new microwave.

'Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am'

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you. Palin's e-mails about the brother-in-law she tried to get fired as a state trooper are fizzing with rage and revenge. Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am.

Palin has it all, along with being vicious and profoundly dishonest. Just hours after her first convention speech, the Associated Press did a good fast listing of her untruths and I won't dwell on them.

I did promise to watch the entire convention so you wouldn't have to, but I discovered a neat trick. I switched between the convention and the 2003 folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind on Bravo.

They were indistinguishable. Click on a nervous wreck with deeply strange hair doing a monologue on society today and where it all went wrong. Are you watching Christian belter Aaron Tippin singing Where the Stars and Stripes and Eagle Fly in the Xcel Centre in St. Paul or the actors from Spinal Tap remixing the 1966 version of Potato's in the Paddy Wagon?

Who delivered this line: "To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will." Was it Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family talking about Bristol Palin's shotgun wedding or was it a flashback to the Kingston Trio?

The conventioneers are nothing like the rich men who run the party, and that's the mystery of the hick vote. They'd be much better served by the Democrats. I know Thomas Frank answered this in What's the Matter with Kansas?; I know that red states vote Republican on social issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their broken, economically abused existence.

Lie works for Palin

But surely they know Barack Obama is not planning to finish off the ordinary hillbilly when he adjusts tax rates. He's going to raise taxes on the top 2% of Americans and that doesn't include anyone at the convention beyond the Bushes and McCains and random party management. So why cheer Palin when she claims otherwise?

Is it racism? I'm told that it is, although I find racism so appalling that I have difficulty identifying it. It is more likely the dearly held Republican notion that any American can become violently rich, as rich as those hedge funders in Greenwich, Conn., who buy $40-million mansions unseen and have their topiary shaped in the form of musical notes.

When Palin and Rudy Giuliani sneered at Obama's years of "community organizing" — they said it like "rectal fissure" — the audience ewww-ed with them. Republicans dream of a personal future that involves only household staff, not equals who need to be persuaded to vote.

So I'm trying to imagine the pain of realizing, as they all must at some point, that it is not going to happen for them. It's the green light at the end of the dock. It's the ship that never comes in, gals, as Palin would put it. But she won't because the lie works for her. It helps her scramble, without compassion, above all those other tense no-hoper ladies in the audience.

American politics isn't short of smart women. Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter, who just endorsed Obama, made an extraordinary speech at the Democratic convention (and a terrific casual appearance on The Colbert Report as Palin was speaking). The Republican party has already consumed nearly all of its moderate "seed corn," she said aptly. Time to start again.

Eisenhower, a scholar and journalist, has a point. Or am I only saying that because she's part of the thoughtful demographic that I'm trying to reach here? Think, Heather, think like a Republican! The Skeptics, shall I call them, are my base, and I'll pander to them as ardently as the Republican patriarchs tease their white female marginals.

This Week

Mad Men is scaring me (AMC on Sunday nights). What has Matthew Weiner, a writer from The Sopranos, created, a period soap opera about reality and façade or a horror series on a localized war between men and women? Was Episode 6 of Season 2 a costume drama about the Madonna/####### complex or the operatic rendition of one simple thing, human cruelty?

Or maybe I'm seeing too much into it and it's just a sexed-up version of the Republican convention.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/09/05/f-vp-mallick.html

[GaryC 7]

Or maybe this little gem. A dem congressman comparing Obama to Jesus and Palin to Pilate.

The Obama supporters should be so proud!!!

[symbiosis 0]

Yeah, pretty much. Even the Canadian press is getting into the act. This is from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporations web site. I mean really, this goes way over the top.

A Mighty Wind blows through Republican convention

Last Updated: Friday, September 5, 2008 | 8:48 PM ET

By Heather Mallick, special to CBC News

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

So why do it?

It's possible that Republican men, sexual inadequates that they are, really believe that women will vote for a woman just because she's a woman. They're unfamiliar with our true natures. Do they think vaginas call out to each other in the jungle night? I mean, I know men have their secret meetings at which they pledge to do manly things, like being irresponsible with their semen and postponing household repairs with glue and used matches. Guys will be guys, obviously.

But do they not know that women have been trained to resent other women and that they only learn to suppress this by constantly berating themselves and reading columns like this one? I'm a feminist who understands that women can nurse terrible and delicate woman hatred.

Palin was not a sure choice, not even for the stolidly Republican ladies branch of Citizens for a Tackier America. No, she isn't even female really. She's a type, and she comes in male form too.

John Doyle, the cleverest critic in Canada, comes right out and calls Palin an Alaska hillbilly. Damn his eyes, I wish I'd had the wit to come up with it first. It's safer than "white trash" but I'll pluck safety out of the nettle danger. Or something.

Doyle's job includes watching a lot of reality television and he's well-versed in the backstory. White trash — not trailer trash, that's something different — is rural, loud, proudly unlettered (like Bush himself), suspicious of the urban, frankly disbelieving of the foreign, and a fan of the American cliché of authenticity. The semiotics are pure Palin: a sturdy body, clothes that are clinging yet boxy and a voice that could peel the plastic seal off your new microwave.

'Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am'

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression. Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

I know that I have an attachment to children that verges on the irrational, but why don't the Palins? I'm not the one preaching homespun values but I'd destroy that ratboy before I'd let him get within scenting range of my daughter again, and so would you. Palin's e-mails about the brother-in-law she tried to get fired as a state trooper are fizzing with rage and revenge. Turn your guns on Levi, ma'am.

Palin has it all, along with being vicious and profoundly dishonest. Just hours after her first convention speech, the Associated Press did a good fast listing of her untruths and I won't dwell on them.

I did promise to watch the entire convention so you wouldn't have to, but I discovered a neat trick. I switched between the convention and the 2003 folk music mockumentary A Mighty Wind on Bravo.

They were indistinguishable. Click on a nervous wreck with deeply strange hair doing a monologue on society today and where it all went wrong. Are you watching Christian belter Aaron Tippin singing Where the Stars and Stripes and Eagle Fly in the Xcel Centre in St. Paul or the actors from Spinal Tap remixing the 1966 version of Potato's in the Paddy Wagon?

Who delivered this line: "To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will." Was it Rev. James Dobson of Focus on the Family talking about Bristol Palin's shotgun wedding or was it a flashback to the Kingston Trio?

The conventioneers are nothing like the rich men who run the party, and that's the mystery of the hick vote. They'd be much better served by the Democrats. I know Thomas Frank answered this in What's the Matter with Kansas?; I know that red states vote Republican on social issues to give themselves the only self-esteem available to their broken, economically abused existence.

Lie works for Palin

But surely they know Barack Obama is not planning to finish off the ordinary hillbilly when he adjusts tax rates. He's going to raise taxes on the top 2% of Americans and that doesn't include anyone at the convention beyond the Bushes and McCains and random party management. So why cheer Palin when she claims otherwise?

Is it racism? I'm told that it is, although I find racism so appalling that I have difficulty identifying it. It is more likely the dearly held Republican notion that any American can become violently rich, as rich as those hedge funders in Greenwich, Conn., who buy $40-million mansions unseen and have their topiary shaped in the form of musical notes.

When Palin and Rudy Giuliani sneered at Obama's years of "community organizing" — they said it like "rectal fissure" — the audience ewww-ed with them. Republicans dream of a personal future that involves only household staff, not equals who need to be persuaded to vote.

So I'm trying to imagine the pain of realizing, as they all must at some point, that it is not going to happen for them. It's the green light at the end of the dock. It's the ship that never comes in, gals, as Palin would put it. But she won't because the lie works for her. It helps her scramble, without compassion, above all those other tense no-hoper ladies in the audience.

American politics isn't short of smart women. Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter, who just endorsed Obama, made an extraordinary speech at the Democratic convention (and a terrific casual appearance on The Colbert Report as Palin was speaking). The Republican party has already consumed nearly all of its moderate "seed corn," she said aptly. Time to start again.

Eisenhower, a scholar and journalist, has a point. Or am I only saying that because she's part of the thoughtful demographic that I'm trying to reach here? Think, Heather, think like a Republican! The Skeptics, shall I call them, are my base, and I'll pander to them as ardently as the Republican patriarchs tease their white female marginals.

This Week

Mad Men is scaring me (AMC on Sunday nights). What has Matthew Weiner, a writer from The Sopranos, created, a period soap opera about reality and façade or a horror series on a localized war between men and women? Was Episode 6 of Season 2 a costume drama about the Madonna/####### complex or the operatic rendition of one simple thing, human cruelty?

Or maybe I'm seeing too much into it and it's just a sexed-up version of the Republican convention.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/09/05/f-vp-mallick.html

you do know that the first "C" in CBC stands for "Canada", right? SO, who cares?

[Carlawarla 1]

Surely you can find "over the top" US news media to quote? The OT Political Forum in VJ is over the top!

Who cares what Canada has to say about the Elections, or any person running here. They're not voting for anyone here.

[symbiosis 0]

New GOP ad quotes Factcheck.org to criticize Obama, but Factcheck says the ad is deliberately misleading:

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/mc...ur_finding.html

Summary

A McCain-Palin ad has FactCheck.org calling Obama's attacks on Palin "absolutely false" and "misleading." That's what we said, but it wasn't about Obama.

Our article criticized anonymous e-mail falsehoods and bogus claims about Palin posted around the Internet. We have no evidence that any of the claims we found to be false came from the Obama campaign.

The McCain-Palin ad also twists a quote from a Wall Street Journal columnist. He said the Obama camp had sent a team to Alaska to "dig into her record and background." The ad quotes the WSJ as saying the team was sent to "dig dirt."

Update, Sept. 10: Furthermore, the Obama campaign insists that no researchers have been sent to Alaska and that the Journal owes them a correction.

Analysis

We don't object to people reprinting our articles. In fact, our copyright policy encourages it. But we've also asked that "the editorial integrity of the article be preserved" and told those who use our items that "you should not edit the original in such a way as to alter the message."

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Or maybe this little gem. A dem congressman comparing Obama to Jesus and Palin to Pilate.

The Obama supporters should be so proud!!!

Why proud? Pride in either of these parties is surely irrelevant - I suspect you can't claim to identify with every representative in the Republican party.

Isn't it within the realm of possibility that in a two party majority system there are always going to be a handful of total whack-jobs?

Anyone who makes comments like this should be given a dressing down - but at the same time its hardly front page material for public consumption.

I have to say though that the one message I'm taking away from all this is that its fine to be oversensitive and that finger-pointing is fun.

[amiquechu 0]

Surely you can find "over the top" US news media to quote? The OT Political Forum in VJ is over the top!

Who cares what Canada has to say about the Elections, or any person running here. They're not voting for anyone here.

I agree.

But some far-left people have been posting articles stating that certain newspapers from other countries want us to elect Obama.....in an attempt to sway some VJ members into voting for him.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

I don't know if that's quite true - the outside world does have an opinion on the election and that perspective is interesting. But convincing people to vote for Obama on the basis of world opinion? I think that's a stretch...

[Emancipation 2]

Surely you can find "over the top" US news media to quote? The OT Political Forum in VJ is over the top!

Who cares what Canada has to say about the Elections, or any person running here. They're not voting for anyone here.

I agree.

But some far-left people have been posting articles stating that certain newspapers from other countries want us to elect Obama.....in an attempt to sway some VJ members into voting for him.

If it makes you feel better CBC almost declared the Democrats had won the Presidential Election last time (when Bush actually won). they had slanted the coverage so much during the race that it was a complete SHOCKER that Bush actually won the race last time.. SO... don't worry.. that's the CBC..

Most of Canada is cheering for Obama though.. they are just tired of the "circling the wagons" politics and self protectionism of the past decade.. They are ready for some new ideas in Washington. We're not THAT bad.

[rclouse 0]

Or maybe this little gem. A dem congressman comparing Obama to Jesus and Palin to Pilate.

The Obama supporters should be so proud!!

That's not the point. Obama's work as a community organizer has been disparaged by Palin and other Republicans, while her experience from being governor of Alaska is touted as superior. But one can make the argument that Jesus was a community organizer (he certainly never held any kind of Roman or religious office), and Republicans kind of have a man crush on Jesus. And Pontius Pilate was, indeed, the Roman governor of Israel. The point is that if you disrespect community organizers, you're disrespecting Jesus. And just cause you're governor doesn't make you a good person or necessarily qualify you for anything. Hell, W. was governor of Texas and look how the last eight years have turned out.

[symbiosis 0]

The whole "community organizer" thing is disingenuous.

If she wants to make a comparison to Obama's community organizer days, the proper one is to her sports broadcasting career, or maybe her beauty pagent days.

Grant it, the decision to fire the librarian in Wasilla for refusing to contenance government censorship was an important one.

[alienlovechild 75]

The whole "community organizer" thing is disingenuous.

If she wants to make a comparison to Obama's community organizer days, the proper one is to her sports broadcasting career, or maybe her beauty pagent days.

Grant it, the decision to fire the librarian in Wasilla for refusing to contenance government censorship was an important one.

Obama has little to no qualifications to be president and the fact his once glorious campaign is sputtering in the face of a no name Alaskan governor says a lot about him. He had no message so it was so easy to sidetrack him with Palin. The stuff about librarians is great because the more enraged the Democrats get the more and more Obama looks like another petty run of the mill politician. The hope is gone and the change message is getting lost. Biden is already gone from the race unless his big mouth gets him trouble again so now it's Palin vs. Obama and McCain is getting a good laugh on the sidelines.

Edited September 11, 2008 by alienlovechild

[IAMX 3,055]

Remember, if Obama's Pastor says it, it's Obama's fault. If anyone else in the Democratic party says it, it's Obama's fault. If any black person says it, it's Obama's fault.

If it isn't, why does Obama need to answer for everyone else?

Ah well, this is just one of the reasons things are so crazy this election. And no one should question why Sarah Palin is getting it handed to her when there's lots of stuff like this.

Edited September 11, 2008 by SRVT

[no name 1]

Or maybe this little gem. A dem congressman comparing Obama to Jesus and Palin to Pilate.

The Obama supporters should be so proud!!

That's not the point. Obama's work as a community organizer has been disparaged by Palin and other Republicans, while her experience from being governor of Alaska is touted as superior. But one can make the argument that Jesus was a community organizer (he certainly never held any kind of Roman or religious office), and Republicans kind of have a man crush on Jesus. And Pontius Pilate was, indeed, the Roman governor of Israel. The point is that if you disrespect community organizers, you're disrespecting Jesus. And just cause you're governor doesn't make you a good person or necessarily qualify you for anything. Hell, W. was governor of Texas and look how the last eight years have turned out.

and Clinton was governor of Arkansas & he did pretty damn well.