Former Democratic Senator from Alaska and 2008 Presidential candidate Mike Gravel, interviewed by Mitch Jeserich, Sonali Kolhatkar, and Larry Bensky on Sarah Palin, John McCain's VP pick. (Sep 1st, 2008)
Absolutely hilarious. You can hear in their voices that the hosts want to shut the guest up since he obviously doesn't agree with their political opinions.
Hat tip to Danny Carlton
Friday, September 12, 2008
Liberal talk show invites wrong guest
Bush Doctrine
Josh Marshall thinks The awkward moment when Charlie Gibson tries his best not to press the point that Sarah Palin doesn't know what he's referring to when he asks her about the "Bush Doctrine"
She does not say she does not know what he's referring to, she asks "In what respect Charlie?"
Wikipedia says it is a phrase used to describe various related foreign policy principles of United States president George W. Bush
Sarah was very correct to ask Charlie specifically what aspect of the Bush Doctrine he was referring to.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Could reduce abortions
Los Angeles Times reported Sarah and Todd Palin's decision to complete her recent pregnancy, despite advance notice that their baby Trig had Down syndrome, is hailed by many in the pro-life movement as walking the walk as well as talking the talk.
Precisely.But a senior Canadian doctor is now expressing concerns that such a prominent public role model as the governor of Alaska and potential vice president of the United States completing a Down syndrome pregnancy
i.e. having a baby with Down Syndrome rather than killing it.may prompt other women to make the same decision
Don't they have that CHOICE what to do with their own bodies?against abortion because of that genetic abnormality. And thereby reduce the number of abortions.
And what would be so terrible about that (other than the fact it might hurt the business of abortion providers).
Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.
Wendy Doniger wrote in Washington Post Belief in god, like getting pregnant, is a private matter between consenting adults
Are children not allowed to believe in God in Wendy's world?(or one consenting adult and one or more deities) and is no one else's business.
Practically every religion I am familiar with encourages its members to spread the faith. In Christianity it is spread by preaching. In Islam it is spread by force.I am on record in this blog (and have not budged an inch) as not objecting to any candidate's religious views.
But you will belittle their views, as you have in this article.But I object strongly when anyone (and especially anyone with political power) tries to take their theology out in public, to inflict those private religious (or sexual) views on other people.
What constitutes "inflict". If someone threatens to cut your head off if you do not embrace his religion, I will agree with you. But if someone prays for something to happen or not happen, that is fine with me. And if God chooses to answer that prayer, even if it is not something I would have wanted to happen, I am prepared to live with it.In both sex and religion (which combine in the debates about abortion), Sarah Palin's views make me fear that the Republican party has finally lost its mind.
Really?????As for sex, the hypocrisy of her outing her pregnant daughter in front of millions of people, hard on the heels of her concealing her own pregnancy
She concealed her own pregnacy because she knew her baby had Down Syndrome, and did not want to have to put up with people telling her to abort it.(her faith in abstinence applying, apparently, only to non-Palins),
I am sure that she wishes her daughter had not gotten pregnant, but since she did, I am happy she will marry the father and have the child.is nicely balanced by her hypocrisy in gushing with loving support of her teenage daughter after using a line-item veto to cut funding for a transitional home for teenage mothers in Alaska.
Maybe she has other plans for where her daughter and the new husband will live.Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.
Precisely what is your definition of a woman? I think she meets any definition I know of. She clearly has a womb, and it has been used five times. And she wears lipstick (we'v been hearing a lot about that recently).The Republican party's cynical calculation that because she has a womb and makes lots and lots of babies (and drives them to school! wow!)
Is driving your children to school something mothers are not supposed to do?she speaks for the women of America,
Did she ever claim to speak for all women in America?and will capture their hearts and their votes,
This is what has the left so frightened about.has driven thousands of real women to take to their computers in outrage. She does not speak for women; she has no sympathy for the problems of other women, particularly working class women.
How do you know she has no sympathy for them. Just because she does not want to subject them to the same solutions she does, does not mean she does not have sympathy for them, and want to help them.And as for religion, I'd love to know precisely how the Good Lord conveyed to her so clearly his intention to destroy the environment (global warming, she thinks, is not the work of human hands, so it must be the work of You Know Who),
Maybe she is right. God destroyed the world once, with water (remember Noah and the Flood), and the next time is supposed to be with fire.the lives of untold thousands of soldiers and innocent bystanders (He is apparently rooting for this, too, she says),
Maybe she means He would prefer a civilization in which people did not fly planes into buildings, killing thousands, or blowing themselves up to kill tens or hundreds.and, incidentally, a lot of polar bears and wolves, not to mention all the people who will be shot with the guns that she thinks other people ought to have. An even wider and more sinister will to impose her religious views on other people surfaced in her determination to legislate
She is running for VP, not th legislature.against abortion even in cases of rape
Even if Roe v Wade was reversed, it would just turn things over to the states, and most abortions take place in Blue States, where it would still be legal.and in her attempts to ban books,
All she did was ask a libraria what her thoughts were.including books on evolution, and to fire the librarian who stood against her.
The librarian never lost her job, even though she was a political appointee and could have legally been fired.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Russian Separatists
NYTimes reported Tatarstan is a long way from South Ossetia. While South Ossetia is a poor border region of Georgia battered by war, Tatarstan is an economic powerhouse in the heart of Russia, boasting both oil reserves and the political stability that is catnip to investors. But the two places have one thing in common: Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, both have given rise to separatist movements. And when President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia formally recognized the breakaway areas of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent nations two weeks ago, activists in Kazan, the Tatar capital, took notice.
Don't get your hopes up. See if Russia is willing to give North Ossetia its freedom, and allow it to combine with South Ossetia to form an independent country that can affiliate with Russia or the West, or both, as it chooses. You will probably see pigs fly first.An association of nationalist groups, the All-Tatar Civic Center, swiftly published an appeal that “for the first time in recent history, Russia has recognized the state independence of its own citizens” and expressed the devout wish that Tatarstan would be next.
Be sure to tell Santa Claus what you are wishing for. Maybe it will help. NOT.
Rehashed from Hannity
Taylor Marsh whined It's the story of Chloe, a Down Syndrome child, whose parents had an encounter with McCain and Palin on a campaign stop. But that's just the wind up. The pitch is personal, meant to move, as well as use an event to capitalize on a special need's child and the sympathy it engenders to bring in votes for McCain-Palin. Republicans are nothing if not cynical, opportunistic and always willing to play an angle, no matter how repugnant.
What is repugnant about a meeting between two families, both of whom decided to bring Down Syndrome children into the world rather than aborting them.Once "Kurt in Pennsylvania" started telling his story on Rush, I knew it sounded familiar. He went through the same patter as he did the day before.... It just so happened to be the exact same story the caller had shared on Hannity's show the day before.
Have you never seen one MSM media outlet pick up a story another featured the previous day?What a coincidence.
What a scandle. Rush (or someone on his staff) watches Hannity. So now people on the radio can benefit from a story from Cable TV.... Having been around radio for well over fifteen years, doing interviews across the country, having my own show (and then losing it),
Now we know why she is bitter.while I try to get back on the air, I know this stuff. When Hannity has a caller on, then that same caller suddenly and miraculously appears on Rush's show, which evolves into a big pr event, it's not by accident.
Will the MSM promise never to cover a story that first aired on a different media outlet?Manufacturing these events is what the right-wing does best.
What is manufactured? A family with a Down Syndrome child came to see a VP candidate with a Down Syndrome child. Neither is ashamed of ot killing the child before it could be born.Using a Down Syndrome child to help their candidate get votes is just their latest low.
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Stem Cells
Ben Smith blogged Joe Biden today waded into the now-sensitive discussion of developmentally disabled kids, my colleague Victoria McGrane reports, and differed with Palin on the issue, though he didn't mention her by name:I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there's joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect.
Will you discourage parents from aborting these babies, so they can have the joy too?Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don't you support stem cell research?
I guess he figures since you didn't kill your baby, and find joy in raising it, why not let us kill a bunch of unborn embryos, even though all of the promising stem cell work has been with adult stem cells, which could mean cells could be grown from the patient's own cells, and not have rejection problems.Palin reportedly opposes much stem cell research; McCain supports it.
Not a Big Tent
Roll Call reported Lieberman Unwelcome at Party Lunches .... “Sen. Lieberman has voluntarily decided not to attend luncheons when he believes it’s likely there would be discussions of presidential politics,”
McCain will have to depend on one of his other moles for information.spokesman Marshall Whitman said, adding that Lieberman has never been told to stay away from the luncheons.
They just told him he wasn't welcome.The decision comes in the wake of Lieberman’s attacks on Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) at the GOP convention last week, and essentially formalizes a deal Reid and Lieberman had cut earlier this year under which Lieberman would not attend meetings that included discussions of sensitive campaign or political issues. Lieberman for weeks has voluntarily forgone the weekly caucus lunches and weekly policy lunches on Thursdays. A Reid spokesman angrily denied that the Majority Leader had booted Lieberman from lunches.
Reid angrily denies a lot of things; that does not mean they are not true. Just that he did not want you to knowAlthough Lieberman caucuses with Democrats — thus giving Reid control of the Senate — his role in the McCain campaign has increasingly marginalized his standing with his Democratic colleagues.
And when McCain is elected in November he will probably put Lieberman on his cabinet.
On the Fence
On The Moderate Voice Polimom says she has pulled the Obama sticker off of my truck; that although I’m not suddenly a McCain supporter, I can no longer be counted in the Obama column. In short, that I’m back on the fence.... the Palin pick told me that McCain is not afraid to think all the way out of the box — at a time when Barack Obama seems to be fully inside it.
McCain and Palin both have histories of working for CHANGE. Obama just talks about it.Was it reckless? I’m not sure, frankly. She is indeed inexperienced,
No more inexperience than Obama. She at least has executive experience, both as Mayor and Governor.but she’s not the utter neophyte her opposition is painting, either. Yes, it could have been a coldly cynical, partisan move by McCain, but I could care less about the politics of the pick. Furthermore, I’m not ready to pass judgment on her ability to lead. Simply because we haven’t yet heard her positions doesn’t invalidate them.
Dreams or nightmares
David Plotz from Slate Magazine has been having dreams (or should I say nightmares) about Sarah Palin: When I mentioned my Palin dreams to Slate colleagues, they volunteered their own. One Obama-supporting colleague dreamed she had urged her young son to kill Palin with a string bean.
Is a string bean listed as a deadly weapon (at least if they don't have an alergy to string beans)?Another dreamed she was at a fashion show and Palin served her crème fraîche on little scooped corn chips.
Is that good or bad.A third says, "In the Sarah Palin dream I keep having, she has superhuman powers but is not really a person at all. In fact, she is more like the weather with glasses and an up-do, pushing clouds around and pitching lightning bolts."
Maybe he wants to buy one of the new Sarah Palin the Executive and Sarah Palin the Super Hero action figure dolls.
Just 29%??????
Just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters believe the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution. Rasmussen Reports™: The most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a presidential election. reported Most American voters (60%) agrees and says the Supreme Court should make decisions based on what is written in the constitution .... 82% of voters who support McCain believe the justices should rule on what is in the Constitution, just 29% of Barack Obama’s supporters agree.
Juan Cole is wrong
Juan Cole thinks the difference between Palin and Muslim fundamentalists is lipstick:
Actually she asked if books her constituents questioned could be removed from the shelves. That is not the same thing as banning books or burning them.She tried to fire the librarian for defying her.
No she did as most politicians do when taking office: seek the resignation of a bunch of political appointees so she could appoint her own. The librarian was popular, so she kept her job.Book banning is common to fundamentalisms around the world, and the mind-set Palin displayed did not differ from that of the Hamas minister of education in the Palestinian government who banned a book of Palestinian folk tales for its sexually explicit language.
She did not argue it. Someone asked the question, and she said why not teach both.Antipathy to Darwin
Who is NOT God, even though the Secular Humanists treat him as such.for providing an alternative to the creation stories of the Bible and the Quran has also become a feature of Muslim fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia prohibits the study, even in universities, of evolution,
There is a big difference between suggesting two alternatives be taught in grade school, and saying something cannot be taught in universities.Freud and Marx. Malaysia has banned a translation of "The Origin of the Species." Likewise, fundamentalists in Turkey have pressured the government to teach creationism in the public schools.
Instead of, or in addition to, evolution?
I could accept those special case exceptions, but I am very proud of Palin for not aborting her Downs Syndrome son, and for her teenage daughter for planning to marry the father of her unplanned baby.She calls abortion an "atrocity" and pledges to reshape the judiciary to fight it.
I also call it an "atrocity", and I wish reshaping the judiciary could fight it, but even if Roe v Wade was over ruled tomorrow, there would not be a significant reduction in the number of abortions, since they generally occur in Blue States, and overturning Roe v Wade would just turn things over to state law.Ironically, Palin's views on the matter are to the right of those in the Muslim country of Tunisia, which allows abortion in the first trimester for a wide range of reasons. Classical Muslim jurisprudents differed among one another on the issue of abortion, but many permitted it before the "quickening" of the fetus, i.e. until the end of the fourth month. Contemporary Muslim fundamentalists, however, generally oppose abortion.
Juan really seems to like how Muslims are so tolerant. I wonder what he thinks of how they treat adultry. The (Old Testament) Bible calls for the death penalty for adultery (Lev. 20:10), but I have not heard of any Christian countries enforcing that today. But here are many cases of adultry resulting in people being stoned to death under Sharia law within the last 20 years. The need for abortion is significantly reduced when you stone women for even having contact with a man other than her husband.
If it was not from God, then who placed the resources there. And it is not God's fault that they have not been able to use those resources to provide a better life for their people.so Palin asks church workers in Alaska to pray
What is wrong with asking church workers to prayfor a $30 billion pipeline in the state because "God's will has to get done."
She asked for God's will to be done in unifying people and companies to get a pipeline built that would create a lot of jobs for Alaskans and get a lot of energy flowing. What is wrong with that?Robert Spencer blogged It is strange to have to spell this out, like explaining how to boil water to a particularly slow-witted chef. Palin, you see, does not advocate, pace Cole, the replacement of U. S. Constitutional law with religious law. She does not advocate, and does not plot, the mass murder of workers in office buildings. She does not promise people that they will be rewarded with unlimited sex in Paradise if they murder unbelievers. She does not teach that those who steal should have their hands amputated, that those who commit adultery should be stoned to death, or that those who leave her religion should be murdered. She does not advocate the consignment of women to veils, burqas, and confinement to the inner chambers of the home. Need I go on? Isn't this obvious?
Monday, September 08, 2008
Good news
USATODAY reported McCain leads Democrat Barack Obama by 50%-46% among registered voters.... McCain leads Obama by 54%-44% among those seen as most likely to vote.
and
MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are to be replaced by NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory as anchor of news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.
and
MSNBC Takes Incendiary Hosts From Anchor Seat. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews are to be replaced by NBC News correspondent and MSNBC host David Gregory as anchor of news coverage of the coming debates and election night. Mr. Olbermann and Mr. Matthews will remain as analysts during the coverage.
Obama says "my muslim faith"
Israel Insider reported In one of the most astonishing gaffes in American political history, in a national televised interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulus, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama referred to "my muslim faith," confirming what researchers and political opponents have been claiming. While Stephanopoulus several seconds later tried to correct him, saying "Christian faith," it was too late.
To their credit Allahpundit immediately blogged Obama didn’t "admit" to being a Muslim on ABC
I agree. This slip does not prove he really is a Muslim. But it makes me question whether he is really a true Christian. I know he claims to be one, but is the black liberation church he was a member of for 20 years really a Christian church, and if Obama really had Christ in his heart, would he ever say the words "my Muslim faith", even in error.
To their credit Allahpundit immediately blogged Obama didn’t "admit" to being a Muslim on ABC
I agree. This slip does not prove he really is a Muslim. But it makes me question whether he is really a true Christian. I know he claims to be one, but is the black liberation church he was a member of for 20 years really a Christian church, and if Obama really had Christ in his heart, would he ever say the words "my Muslim faith", even in error.
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Interview Sarah Palin
Josh Marshall whined There's a lot of complaining
By media outlets pledged to support Obama, and hoping to trip her up to reverse McCain Moves Ahead, 48% to 45%that the McCain campaign won't allow anyone to interview Sarah Palin.
They know she can deliver a speech that hits it out of the ball pake. They want to see if she needs any help in other areas before just throwing her into the lions den.And for the major news outlets that would be in line for such an interview there's a logic to keeping up the drumbeat. But McCain campaign manager Rick Davis is right: It's their campaign to run. They can do it how they want. Everyone else should just shut up, stop complaining and call the reality for what it is.
Oba,a waited until after his Convention before going on the O'reilly Factor. Give the poor girl a few days.Davis says Palin won't give any interviews until she feels "comfortable" giving one. And this morning he added that she wouldn't give any "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."
I suspect that will come after Hell freezes over AND pigs learn to fly.Sarah Palin could be the President of the United States in four and a half months. We tend to think of this as an abstraction; but it's true.
That is not as frightening as Obama becoming President, and that would not require the death of a President.And yet today she's so unprepared and knows so little about the challenges and tasks facing the country that she can't even give a softball interview.
If she could be sure that the only questions she would face would be the challenges and tasks facing the country, and not just the latest lies about her, she might be more willing to be interviewed.That's really all we need to know. Yes, she's off being prepped at some undisclosed location. And I've little doubt that by the time her debate rolls around she'll be sufficiently pumped full of slogans and bromides to make a show of it. But now, this moment, is the one that tells us all we need to know.
And she will wipe Biden off the map.
Maureen Dowd's fantasies
Maureen Dowd is fantasizing about Hillary/Palin matchup in 2012: we’ll have to wait until 2012 when the two fiercest competitors on the trail will no doubt face off in the presidential debate, with Palin still riding high from her 2008 field-dressing of Obama (who’s now back in the Senate convening his subcommittee on Afghanistan).
Maureen, we appreciate any help you can give to defeat Obama, and set up that Hillary/Palin matchup. And it would guarantee the first Female President.The two women are both aggressive pols who take disagreement personally, accruing a body count of rivals, and who have been known to exaggerate their accomplishments. But in ideological terms, the gun-toting hockey mom and the shot-swilling Warrior Queen of the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits are opposites.
Just like Good and Evil.
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