[QUOTE=ewmayer;140221]I but I thought Lieberman had already committed to being the Presidential candidate of the People's Front of Judaea.[/QUOTE]Not the Judaean People's Front?

I really must try to keep up with American politics. All the fun of watching polecat wrestling and with much more TV coverage.


Paul

[QUOTE=ewmayer;140221]Even though I still can't stand her speech voice, Props to Hillary for doing the right thing. Looks like she finally managed to get Bill to STFU and behave himself, too. :)[/QUOTE]

I always thought that Bill was acting as her attack dog at her behest.....

Payback for Monica........

Sarah Palin
 

[URL]http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Alaskan_governor_Sarah_Palin_chosen_by_McCain_as_Vice_Presidential_running_mate[/URL]

Looks like that campaign consultant on the Charlie Rose show was right:

[quote=cheesehead;136211]"If Obama doesn't choose a woman for Vice-President[-ial candidate], McCain will."[/quote]

Of course, Ernst may also have been right about that:

[quote=ewmayer;136233]McCain choosing a female running mate would be nothing more than the VP-choice equivalent of the proposed "gas tax holiday" - blatant political pandering.[/quote]

Some commentators say this may mean that Republicans have decided to cease attacks on Obama's lack of experience. (Palin has even less political office experience, at least on a national level, than Obama.)

I suspect we'll see Democrats pointing out that McCain announced his choice on his [I]72nd[/I] birthday, and mentioning the U.S. presidential line of succession[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_line_of_succession[/URL]).

Recall the 2005 TV show "Commander in Chief"? ([URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander_in_Chief_(TV_series[/URL])) Let me quote from [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiction_regarding_United_States_presidential_succession[/URL]:

[quote]The President, Teddy Bridges, suffers from a severe [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke"]brain hemorrhage[/URL] and lapses into a coma. His female Vice President, [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackenzie_Allen"]Mackenzie Allen[/URL] ([URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geena_Davis"]Geena Davis[/URL])...[/quote]

Interestingly, the Wikipedia article on the TV series ([URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commander_in_Chief_(TV_series[/URL])) has this:

[quote]The [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Values_Coalition"]Traditional Values Coalition[/URL], [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FrontPage_Magazine"]FrontPage Magazine[/URL] and conservative commentators have gone on record complaining that the show was really a thinly-veiled attempt to lay groundwork for a possible 2008 Presidential run by prominent Democrat [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton"]Hillary Clinton[/URL]. This charge has been denied by Lurie, Davis, and ABC.
[/quote]... of course -- it turns out to have been a thickly-veiled mirror-image attempt to lay groundwork for a 2008 Vice-Presidential run by the obscure Republican first-female (and youngest-ever) governor of Alaska!!!

- - - - -

Hey! All you observers from outside the States: Is this still interesting, or what?

If McCain was looking to pander to disgruntled Hillary supporters by way of his VP choice I think he miscalculated badly. Whatever my issues with Hillary, at least she's *qualified* for the office. Palin would appear to be nothing more than a female version of Dan Quayle. Ooh, "Undertook ethics reform in Alaska state government" ... awfully impressive, that.

Maybe the GOP figured that a young woman VP candidate would be less likely to be savaged by Joe Biden, due to the "look, big bad old white dude beating up on helpless little girl" factor [I know it sounds bizarre, but after all this *is* the GOP we're talking about here] ... I doubt that would work because even if Biden were loath to really rip on Palin, the Dems can always get Hillary to do it for them.

As to last night - The GOP spinmeisters can try to play the bogus "Obama on Mount Olympus", "McCain is too *humble* to speak in a large stadium" angle all they like, but you just know they must've been green with envy last night, knowing their man would be lucky to pack the food court at the local mall, if he weren't busing in hardcore right-wingers from local seminaries and gun clubs everywhere he went. They tried the same stunt when Obama spoke in Berlin, and McCain made some bizarre "point" of going to a local Der Dog Haus-style fake German restaurant. Pathetic.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;140330]If McCain was looking to pander to disgruntled Hillary supporters by way of his VP choice I think he miscalculated badly. Whatever my issues with Hillary, at least she's *qualified* for the office. Palin would appear to be nothing more than a female version of Dan Quayle. Ooh, "Undertook ethics reform in Alaska state government" ... awfully impressive, that.[/QUOTE]

Wow, ernst, you really have an axe to grind don't you.

Honestly, being one of the "middle of the road" people who helps to swing the election, she is a better choice than most of his other "obvious" choices. I haven't done a lot of research on her yet, but from what I have seen so far, she is more palatable than Joe Biden. I hated that choice by Obama. AFAIAC, Biden is more of the same. If Obama is the candidate of change, his choice is quite the opposite. Of course it is rather stupid of McCain to base his candidacy on change because from the outset he would appear to be just like Bush.

Does anyone else here remember Joe Biden's problem with [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism"]plagiarism[/URL]? It was half my lifetime ago, but I still remember it.

Is it just me or does the name John McCain remind anyone else of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McClane"]John McClane[/URL]?

I know a number of people who will vote for McCain because they are terrified of the inertia that would be caused by Democrats running the Executive and Legislative branches of government. They would vote for Obama if the Republicans controlled the House and Senate. Their opinion is that the "must vote party line" members of congress would wreak havoc on the country if they got too much power. Part of me tends to agree.

If McCain is elected, I would feel sorry for [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Stevens"]John Paul Stevens[/URL]. He would have to avoid retirement for another 4 years. He had his chance when Billy boy was president, but decided to wait it out. What does annoy me is that many of the justices should really be retired. Is it just my opinion or are they as attached to power as any politician?

[QUOTE=ewmayer;140330]... at least she's *qualified* for the office. Palin would appear to be nothing more than a female version of Dan Quayle.[/QUOTE]

From what I can tell, she has about as much experience as Obama. She is the only one of the 4 that has actually run something - and Alaskans seem to think she is pretty good at it. The other 3 are merely legislators, with Obama having far less experience than McCain or Biden.

[quote=ewmayer;140330]If McCain was looking to pander to disgruntled Hillary supporters by way of his VP choice I think he miscalculated badly.[/quote]It's been observed that McCain couldn't expect liberal Hillary supporters to vote for him no matter how disgruntled they were, so Palin might really help attract conservative Hillary supporters, not to mention disgruntled-with-McCain pro-lifers.

[quote]Maybe the GOP figured that a young woman VP candidate would be less likely to be savaged by Joe Biden, due to the "look, big bad old white dude beating up on helpless little girl" factor [I know it sounds bizarre, but after all this *is* the GOP we're talking about here] ... I doubt that would work because even if Biden were loath to really rip on Palin, the Dems can always get Hillary to do it for them.[/quote]But televised debates really have swayed noticeable numbers of undecided voters in the past, according to polls. Lots of undecideds won't pay much attention to much else. So that one night of the vice-presidential debate on TV may be the most important single thing a VP candidate can do for the ticket. The choice of Palin makes it less likely we'd see the sort of thing Benson did to Quayle on TV in '88: "I knew Jack Kennedy. You're no Jack Kennedy".

[quote=rogue;140339]Does anyone else here remember Joe Biden's problem with [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism"]plagiarism[/URL]? It was half my lifetime ago, but I still remember it.[/quote]From [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism[/URL] at rogue's link:

[quote=Wikipedia]... [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delaware"]Delaware[/URL] [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate"]Senator[/URL] [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden"]Joe Biden[/URL] was forced out of the [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_presidential_campaign,_1988"]1988 U.S. Presidential race[/URL] (but remained in the U.S. Senate) when it was discovered that parts of his campaign speeches were plagiarized from speeches by British Labour party leader [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Kinnock"]Neil Kinnock[/URL] and [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kennedy"]Robert Kennedy[/URL].[/quote]Was the plagiarism done by Biden, or by some speechwriter then went unrecognized by Biden?

[quote=rogue]Is it just me or does the name John McCain remind anyone else of [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McClane"]John McClane[/URL]?[/quote]Just you. :smile:

[quote]I know a number of people who will vote for McCain because they are terrified of the inertia that would be caused by Democrats running the Executive and Legislative branches of government.[/quote]Were those people traumatized by the 2001-2007 stretch when Republicans ran both?

[quote]They would vote for Obama if the Republicans controlled the House and Senate. Their opinion is that the "must vote party line" members of congress would wreak havoc on the country if they got too much power. Part of me tends to agree.[/quote](Again) ... from the example of 2001-2007?

History shows that Democratic congressfolks, when in the majority, are much less likely to march in lockstep than are Republicans when _they_ are the majority. Democrats more readily splinter-up into quarreling groups, not automatically supporting a president of their own party.

[quote]What does annoy me is that many of the justices should really be retired. Is it just my opinion or are they as attached to power as any politician?[/quote][I]That[/I] one is widespread, I think. But there are excellent reasons (e.g., resistance to partisan pressure, once appointed) for making federal judges appointed for life, no matter how much I grit my teeth when some presidents have done it.

[QUOTE=rogue;140339]Wow, ernst, you really have an axe to grind don't you.[/quote]
As a matter of fact I do have an axe to grind with McCain - having supported McCain-the-independent back in 2000, in the ensuing "evolution of John McCain" I see a man who has sold his soul to the radical right wing of the Republican party in order to make himself nominatable. And heck, just look at the respective 2 campaigns - on the McCain side the only "progressive initiatives" I see - for examples the "thousand windmills" bullshit featured loudly in the campaign ads he was running during the Olympics - are nearly always nullified by his actual voting record. Did you happen to read my post #362 above, or dismiss it based on "axe to grind"ness?

[quote]Does anyone else here remember Joe Biden's problem with [URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism"]plagiarism[/URL]? It was half my lifetime ago, but I still remember it.[/quote]
Personally, I think most of these loud "plagiarism!!!" accusations are overblown, especially when it comes to speeches and occurs at the level of a single sentences or so. Here`s Wikipedia on Biden v Kinnock:
[quote]By August 1987, Biden`s campaign had begun to lag behind those of Michael Dukakis and Richard Gephardt. In September 1987, the campaign ran into trouble when he plagiarized a speech by Neil Kinnock, then-leader of the British Labour Party. Kinnock’s speech included the lines: "Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?" Then pointing to his wife in the audience, he continued: "Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?" While Biden’s speech included the lines: "I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?" Then, pointing to his wife: "Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I'm the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?" [b]Though Biden had previously cited Kinnock as the source for the formulation many times before, he made no reference to the original source at the August 23 debate in question.[/b][/quote]
Seems he had no problem with attribution previously, so do you think he would deliberately omit attribution during the debate, knowing that the Dukakis campaign would [and did] jump all over that? Sounds like an honest omission to me. I would classify Biden`s law-review-article flap [see Wikipedia] while a student as more serious, but come on, how many students who have had write dozens of tedious term papers in their college careers have never *once* failed to properly attribute source material? In my opinion McCain`s long-out-of-college involvement as a member in good standing of the Keating Five trumps Biden`s speech-segment-lifting, but then again, I have an axe to grind.

[QUOTE=Prime95;140348]From what I can tell, she has about as much experience as Obama. She is the only one of the 4 that has actually run something - and Alaskans seem to think she is pretty good at it. The other 3 are merely legislators, with Obama having far less experience than McCain or Biden.[/QUOTE]

Let`s have a look - again being lazy and consulting Wikipedia [***note the attribution there, folks***]:

Barack Obama:

[quote]A graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review, Obama worked as a community organizer and practiced as a civil rights attorney before serving in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004. He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. Following an unsuccessful bid for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2000, he announced his campaign for the U.S. Senate in January 2003. After a primary victory in March 2004, Obama delivered the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He was elected to the Senate in November 2004 with 70% of the vote.[/quote]

And Sarah Palin:

[quote]At Wasilla High School in Wasilla, Alaska, Palin was the head of the school Fellowship of Christian Athletes. She was the point guard and captain for the basketball team. She helped the team win the Alaska small-school championship in 1982, hitting a critical free throw in the last seconds, despite a stress fracture in her ankle. She earned the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" because of her intense play, and was the leader of team prayer before games.

In 1984, Palin won the Miss Wasilla beauty contest, then finished second in the Miss Alaska pageant, which won her a college scholarship. In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.

Palin holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Idaho, where she also minored in political science. She married Todd Palin, her boyfriend since high school, on August 29, 1988. She then briefly worked as a sports reporter for local Anchorage television stations while also working as a commercial fisherwoman with her husband.

Palin served two terms on the Wasilla City Council from 1992 to 1996. In 1996, she challenged and defeated incumbent mayor, John Stein, criticizing wasteful spending and high taxes. The ex-mayor and sheriff tried to organize a recall campaign, but failed. Palin followed through on her campaign promises to reduce her own salary, and to reduce property taxes by 60%. She ran for reelection against the former mayor in 1999, winning by an even larger margin. Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors.

In 2002, Palin made an unsuccessful bid for Lieutenant Governor, coming in second to Loren Leman in a five-way race in the Republican primary. After Frank Murkowski resigned from his long-held U.S. Senate seat in mid-term to become governor, Palin interviewed to be his possible successor. Murkowski appointed his daughter, then-Alaska State Representative Lisa Murkowski.

Governor Murkowski appointed Palin Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she served from 2003 to 2004 until resigning in protest over what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Alaskan Republican leaders, who ignored her whistleblowing complaints of legal violations and conflicts of interest. After she resigned, she exposed the state Republican Party's chairman, Randy Ruedrich, one of her fellow Oil & Gas commissioners, who was accused of doing work for the party on public time, and supplying a lobbyist with a sensitive e-mail. Palin filed formal complaints against both Ruedrich and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes, who both resigned; Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine.

Running on a clean-government campaign in 2006, Palin upset then-Governor Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary. In August, she declared that education, public safety, and transportation would be three cornerstones of her administration. Despite the lack of support from party leaders and being outspent by her Democratic opponent, she won the general election in November, defeating former Governor Tony Knowles.[/quote]

Nice - I admire her commitment to ethics in government and fight against pork-barrel spending. [Not to mention that she's an ex-beauty queen and "good Christian"]. But George, your "merely legislators" phrasing strikes me as rather tendentious. You seem to imply that over 10 years as a state legislator and U.S. senator are no more relevant to being president than a term on the local city council, a brief state ethics commissionership and 2 years as governor of Alaska. That seems rather a reach. But I believe I may have found the biggest reason she was attractive to the McCain campaign [besides the beauty queen thing] in the same Wiki article:

[i]"Palin is strongly pro-life and belongs to Feminists for Life."[/i]


[QUOTE=cheesehead;140356]The choice of Palin makes it less likely we'd see the sort of thing Benson did to Quayle on TV in '88: "I knew Jack Kennedy. You're no Jack Kennedy".[/QUOTE]
Why is such a scenario less likely here? I'm afraid I'm not following.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;140370]your "merely legislators" phrasing strikes me as rather tendentious.[/quote]

The Presidency is an executive position. It can be argued that experience as a governor is more relevant than experience as a legislator.

[quote]You seem to imply that over 10 years as a state legislator and U.S. senator are no more relevant to being president than a term on the local city council, a brief state ethics commissionership and 2 years as governor of Alaska.[/QUOTE]

I stand by my statement. They've both been in politics since 96/97. She has more executive experience, Obama has more national experience. I'm not saying Obama isn't qualified, I'm saying Palin is about as qualified as he is. This is precisely why I don't think you'll see many attacks from the Obama camp that she isn't qualified.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;140370]As a matter of fact I do have an axe to grind with McCain - having supported McCain-the-independent back in 2000, in the ensuing "evolution of John McCain" I see a man who has sold his soul to the radical right wing of the Republican party in order to make himself nominatable. And heck, just look at the respective 2 campaigns - on the McCain side the only "progressive initiatives" I see - for examples the "thousand windmills" bullshit featured loudly in the campaign ads he was running during the Olympics - are nearly always nullified by his actual voting record. Did you happen to read my post #362 above, or dismiss it based on "axe to grind"ness?[/quote]

I will admit that I haven't read every post in this thread.

I did discover this [URL="http://www.ontheissues.org/Sarah_Palin.htm"]page[/URL] that describes Sarah Palin's stance on many issues, although detail is lacking for most. [URL="http://www.ontheissues.org/Senate/Joe_Biden.htm"]Joe Biden[/URL]'s stances have much more detail. I haven't read everything (since there is so much), but I strongly disagree with him WRT Social Security. The general gist I gather is that he likes to spend money and he likes big government.

I would like to find a fiscal conservative who is socially progressive. Is there such a person?