McCain picking Palin has ended the race, right? I can't wait to watch Bush, Cheney, Romney, Huck, Crist, et al make speeches at the RNC about how she is the best qualified candidate for VP - what a crock. If this don't show McCain has beyond poor judgement, nothing will.

I want to hear more from Palin about creationism. Her views on birth control should be interesting, too: five kids and counting, birth defects be damned.
And what's up with the hair? Is she one of those ladies who don't believe god wants her to cut her hair (excepting bangs)?

I'm hoping the creationism, global warming, and morning-after-pill-for-rape-victims issues come up at the VP debate. The abortion issue especially really needs to be hammered home. When the moderates and independents finally see how extreme a McCain presidency really would be, it's going to make a lot of difference.

I do think this spells disaster for the McCain campaign and I'm delighted. I've talked to several moderate Republicans who had planned to vote for McCain and now are rethinking it, based solely on the threat of having this woman in charge. While his age has been in the back of peoples' minds, his VP choice has emphasized it, because suddenly we would not be OK if something were to happen to him.

Wanting to deny a morning-after-pill to victims of rape or incest is totally assinine. Religion my ass. If god existed, you think he would tell a girl who just got raped by her insane father (see recent austria case) "sorry you must have this possibly retarded possibly deformed incest baby"

People without solid reasons to back up their opinions hide behind god.

And yeah... the rumor is the pawlenty and romney camps were pissed about the decision. So now those guys have to stand up there on stage and talk about how awesome she is. What a pathetic old man McCunt is.

My question is regarding her down syndrome baby. She went to work immediately after having the baby and is now running for VP. Is it really so hard to make the tough decision of having a special needs child when you can afford to pay someone else to take care of that baby?

I like to see progressives emphasizing her stance on issues. That's a good thing. The soccer moms are watching, and hers is a good story. The media will love her (already does.) Just stick to issues, issues, issues.

I keep reading bloggers on the left being very congratulatory of Palin for being such an awesome mom. Have we heard the same on the right about Biden being such an awesome dad? Is this just an effort on the left to once again reassure the family values nuts that, see, we honor families too?

Okay, consider this, which came from someone close to me; I can't take credit. What if Palin is nothing more than a distraction to get them through the convention and help capture news cycles. Then, once the convo is over, she drops out b/c of her children, the youngest being the biggest reason. At that point, someone like Petraeus decides to step in b/c even though he said he did not want to be a politician, his country needs him and he will take up this mantle. There's weeks of news cycles taken by the September surprise. It counters Joe Biden pretty effectively. By the time the shock and awe died down, the press would be concerned only with horse race reporting so there wouldn't be proper vetting. Frankly, this possibility scares the crap out of me.

Couple of thoughts. John and Cindy McCain seem so cold and detached all the time. During the VP event when their families were there (and subsequent People magazine photo op) why was only 1 McCain daughter present? He seems to be saying "for the purposes of my campaign, I have one daughter" when there are actually several other kids, even one from his first wife's previous marriage who he adopted. Nothing wrong with step-kids and adopted kids; lots of those all across America. What *is* wrong is deciding which of them are acknowledged at various times. Second thought... Cindy McCain and Sarah Palin will have a blast on the tourbus chatting about their sisters. Sarah risked her job as governor to protect her sister from an abusive husband, which Cindy has disowned her sister.

I was thinking along similar lines because of the comparison of Palin to Harriet Miers. I get the impression Palin will suffer the same fate. She won't survive one interview on MTP or This Week before everyone has to admit she's very nice and all, but completely out of her depth.

Something has to be in the works. Out of the entire Republican Party THIS was who McBush felt was best for the job?

I used to be a social worker for families with children with disabilites.

Those parents didn't have time to take a shower and this mother is able to raise 5 kids, one with a disability, and run for VP.

This will be talked about as a sign of strength on her part, but in reality it is a sign that she is detached from her own family.

Her son is being sent to Iraq, and she said she has paid very little attention to the war. These are serious red flags to me as a parent.

anyone seen this???

http://mudflats.wordpress.com/2008/08/29/what-is-mccain-thinking-one-alaskans-perspective/

Agree with the above post. Let's stick to the issues - an area where democrats can't be beaten this fall. The more we insult her, the more Republicans will claim we're insulting middle class Christian families.

Agree with the above post. Let's stick to the issues - an area where democrats can't be beaten this fall. The more we insult her, the more Republicans will claim we're insulting middle class Christian families.

A couple of thoughts since this pick.
1) As excited as I have been about this election, I was nearly instantly turned off again (last time was November 1999.) I can't believe that such a serious situation could be used to play games and then fawned over by such a lazy, incompetent media.
2) That same media still takes it easier on Bush and his administration than I believe they should. There is no reason to believe they will seriously seek to prove what most of us know (she is wholly and totally unqualified. The first critical response from a major news outlet will be called sexist and reminded that that was why Hillary couldn't "break that glass ceiling".
3) With that said, I can't wait for the first reporter to ask her to explain three things she disagrees with Bush about. My fear about discussing the issues is that she will ignorantly, yet unabashedly steak her claim on all the issues Bush ran his campaign on. That will become the narrative that that same lazy media will run with.
No matter how much Obama will discuss open mindedness and compromise, we have this election boiled down to
GUNS
GAYS
ABORTION

Thank you for letting me rant. Now I'm going to donate $25 dollars at www.donate.barackobama.com
Please do the same.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/12997

This is on the front page of Yahoo! currently, and they appear to get some of the 'analysis' right.

I hope a fair number of folks are reading this and gets them to thinking.

All I ask is for everyone to take their outrage and put it out there against the ticket. Is this an argument that CAN be made without being:

1. tone deaf
2. misogynist/sexist
3. over the heads of the majority of voters
4. pushing against their common sense sensibilities?

The arguments made are valid - but the Palin choice has only solidified the partisan bases more. The independent voters or weak partisans are still up for grabs and the Palin pick raises questions that HAVE to be answered with that group in mind.

QT

Terry4505--You hit the nail on the head! Excellent points.

Headline on Washington Post website: "With VP Pick, McCain Reclaims Maverick Image"

By the same logic, jumping off a 10-story building is being a maverick! Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater is being a maverick!

I think this whole situation can be summed up with one word...

Sanjia

The effervescently popular American Idol flame-out

If you just let her on stage enough times, eventually Palin will demonstrate herself to be out of her league. Don't freak out...don't condescend...just let the woman speak.

I too originally thought that unleashing HRC on Monty Palin would be a good idea...but not anymore. We just need to focus on hitting our marks and doing our thing. Kneecapping will only bring her(him)sympathy airtime and votes.

MCat and Space Cowboy ... thanks for the links. The picture of beautiful downtown Wasilla should give everyone a basic idea what Palin is about! A quaint throwback to another era may work as an Alaskan backwater; definitely NOT as a candidate for VPOTUS!

Speaking of which, being from Florida, I can only imagine what Gov. Charlie Crist is feeling right about now. Rage at not being Number Two, maybe? And I'm also wondering if his engagement to the Beard Heiress will be broken; the wedding is scheduled for September. With not much to be gained politically now, will he actually go through with the wedding?

Hey ... when hurricanes and tropical storms are raging around you, it's a distraction ... what can I say?

@ Ready...

Keep us posted on the Crist "engagement". I imagine that the word of the break up will be really, really kept on the down low.

I read somewhere that Crist's wedding was/is scheduled for Dec. Most of us will have forgotten about it by then... :(

How can anyone in their right mind think this woman is prepared to be the VPOTUS much less POTUS? The fact that she think she is prepared, shows an incredible lack of judgment and understanding of what the job entails.

Don't know what to say about this...

http://teachers.net/chatboard/topic232793/8.30.08.07.55.46.html

A little too speculative?

Well, since y'all have indicated an interest in the Charlie Saga, here's a little background on the "big romance":
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20080713/NEWS/807130328/0/APN
Apparently, Ms. Rome has toned down her image somewhat; this pic from 2006 shows her with her then-hubby and their two daughters:
http://www.thenewyorkscene.com/webready_redcross81906/ppages/ppage3.htm

Yow, Space Cowboy ... that's some theory! Makes the whole Crist thing seem pretty tame. I dunno ... I'm no expert in genetics but there is a much higher instance in Downs Syndrome among older mothers. I think they're grasping at straws on this one.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/make-her-whine_b_122648.html

That pretty much says everything I want to say.

How about the irresponsibility of a woman allowing herself to become pregnant at 44. That is like playing russian roulet with genetics.

I would not be suprised in the slightest if it were her daughters.

Cindy better keep an eye on John, Palin is right in his wheel house. Every 30 or 40 years John's wandering eye becomes a problem.

"Ready to be President, Yup Yup...."

Read this: http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20222685_1,00.html

I love the closing question:

"Mrs. McCain, do you even remember the last time he changed a diaper?"
CINDY: "No. And I'm not sure he does."
JOHN: "Heh-heh. I remember. There's some experiences you never forget."

Of course he remembers. He changed his own this morning.

^^Irresponsibility of "letting" herself become pregnant at 44? That's a little insulting.

QT

@Packy...

BAM!

Oh Lord! McPOW is speaking in PA - and, it turns out, corruption in Washington is an issue in this election! Who knew, since it hadn't been mentioned before except in reference to the LOBBYISTS running McPOW's campaign!

Packy, the pic on the People link was absolutely frightening ... they look like extras from The Truman Show! Sounded like 'em, too. Oy!

Check out the comments from this blogger who has taken credit for Palin's VP slot:

http://palinforvp.blogspot.com/

Note that he lives in Colorado Springs. That's where I grew up. I used to be one of "them". All of my family's friends were them. I went to their churches, dated their daughters, and mostly got sick of them.

I know how they associate. They do not think, they associate, much like Pavlov's dog. They watch Full of Xenophobia Nausea - it's their only source of information.

They do not have an ounce of love in them. Not even a tiny spec of it. It's all ideological.

I used to have a website called Christ Isn't Coming Back but grew weary of their death threats and no, the police don't care because they read my website and got hot under the collar. There's no love in them either.

But I've been thinking since Wednesday that I should do the same thing but under a different domain name and a different perspective. I know my Bible really well and I just love everything I've learned from it. I would never call my self a Christian though as I really hate labels and always have because I experience enough prejudice each day to last me a hundred lifetimes due to me disability (and no, that wasn't God's plan - I hate people who use their "faith" to rationalize everything.

Is anyone here interested me in resuming my website? Not to attack Christians or Catholics or anyone for their beliefs, but rather to try to help them correctly perceive the shadows on the walls, to open their hearts if possible, for a little bit of sunshine to peek in and see what happens.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/30/121350/137/486/580223

What's all this, then?

1.Please circulate that tax chat everywhere.
2. Especially how much MORE the millionaires will pay if Obama is president
3. Then show that EVERY single talking head makes 2,3,4,5,6 million a year and will have to py a lot more in taxes. Wolf, Katie, George, Charlie,Dobbs, all of them are voting for their tax breaks.
4. 95% will be paying less. Get this news everywhere.
5. Then suggest that we make these candidates PASS a president's test!
6.Why shouldnt they pass a test?

Science
Geography
World History
US Constitution
World Religion
Geology
More, more
Economics

Neat article here...

http://teachers.net/chatboard/topic232793/8.30.08.07.55.46.html

Note the "Update"...

Update: After reading this article, the McCain campaign issued the following statement: "The authors quote four scholars attacking Gov. Palin's fitness for the office of Vice President. Among them, David Kennedy is a maxed out Obama donor, Joel Goldstein is also an Obama donor, and Doris Kearns Goodwin has donated exclusively to Democrats this cycle. Finally, Matthew Dallek is a former speech writer for Dick Gephardt. This is not a story about scholars questioning Governor Palin's credentials so much as partisan Democrats who would find a reason to disqualify or discount any nominee put forward by Senator McCain."

David Kennedy is a legal scholar known for his work on, and criticism of, international law. Officially, he is the Manley Hudson Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and director of its European Law Research Center. He will become Vice President and professor of International Affairs for Brown University in January 2008.

[Doris Kearns Goodwin] received her B.A. degree from Colby College, Maine in 1964. She later earned a Ph.D. in government from Harvard University.

Doris Kearns won a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1964. Goodwin went to Washington, D.C., as a White House Fellow in 1967 during the Johnson administration, working as his assistant. After Johnson left office, she assisted the President in drafting his memoirs.

After LBJ's retirement in 1969, Goodwin taught government at Harvard for ten years, including a course on the American Presidency.

Matthew Dallek - Education: Ph.D., Columbia University, Dept. of History, 1999

Courses Taught and Programs (Virginia Tech):
Democratic Governance in the Economy
New Media and American Public Policy

Joel Goldstein - Vincent C. Immel Professor of Law at Saint Louis University

Joel Goldstein is a highly respected scholar of the Presidency, Vice Presidency and Constitutional Law, having written widely in all three areas.

Professor Goldstein is perhaps best known for his work on the vice presidency. His doctoral dissertation grew into his first book, The Modern American Vice Presidency: The Transformation of a Political Institution (Princeton University Press 1982). He has written widely on the vice presidency, consulted on vice presidential selection and is frequently interviewed on the subject. He is currently writing a new book on the Vice Presidency as it has developed the last 30 years. He is also working on studies of Senator Edmund S. Muskie and Justice Louis Brandeis.

Drats...used the wrong link up there and this was all I could find.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20080830/pl_politico/13001_1

Appears the "Update" was taken out. I'll see if I can the original again.

Got it...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/13001

Strange how those things bounce around like that, no?

Oh, and this needs to be spread far and wide (though most of us have already read about it)...

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahjlNLo_3TFE&refer=home

Space - Paddy & Gottalaff put the raw video of her press conference up at their place if you're interested:
http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2008/08/raw-unedited-video-sarah-palins.html

Thanks ceu! I'll have to get some drinks going to get myself through them, but I'll be watching.

Thanks again.

@ Space Cowboy

Dude... All those people are obviously biased. More egghead liberals with their "credentials" and "degrees" and their "rational argumentation" and "knowledge of stuff".

Well, um...yeah...I suppose.

But, Goodwin has been under fire before for plagiarism, so I'll try to be more careful in the future. :) Oooh...speaking of which, found the info on those folks from the Wikipedia and the Googles.

("Knowledge of stuff" - I like that and may have to steal it.)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/30/121350/137/486/580223

Thanks for the link Travis. Reading the comments was really interesting. It's amazing how many people reject this story by focusing on the photos as being an unreliable way of determining someone's pregnancy.

I can't speak to other people's experience but I'm 5 for 5 on detecting pregnancies in women. It's just OBVIOUS and yet subtle in the first few months. My earliest was 6 weeks. Her breasts got bigger.

This is not rocket science but all the trolls and nailbiters at DailyKos certainly seem to think it is. I think only two things can settle it:
1) birth record
2) DNA because Gov Palin could have falsified a birth record.

If those pan out then I expect not a single person would dare say a negative thing about mom Bristol because all moms deserve support. But Gov. Palin deserves nothing but scorn.

I know a former beautify queen mom who also happens to be a fundamentalist Christian and she went to great lengths to hide an affair with her brother-in-law. After iteration of her "story" about a series of events it was plain as day to everybody that she was lying. But the story was so embedded into her family that it created all kinds of problems and mental health issues for her daughters that even when I suggested the story as a lie to her eldest daughter, she freaked and decided she couldn't trust me anymore and that began to unravel our relationship.

If this Palin lie turns out to be fact, then I suspect we're going to see traditional media go out of their way to protect Palin. I think McCain knew this and sprang us a trap: the lie is truth, black is white, up is down and don't you DARE think otherwise.

The thing about the photos of her daughter, Friction, is that if the top one was taken in late 2007 and the bottom in March 2008, then the pregnancy would have been 3 more months advanced and she would have been bigger in the second photo. She's not. So there's that...
And we have to remember that this involves a 17 year old girl who in no way asked to be put in the national spotlight.
What it should spur is a discussion about sex education in schools & how abstinence-only isn't working & on making contraception available rather than classifying it as abortion. The notion that people who hit puberty at 11 or 12 are going to remain virgins until marriage 10 or 15 years later is absurd and there are too many young women with unwanted pregnancies for us to pretend that the current administration's approach to this problem - which both McCain & Palin agree - works.