Does the war in the Caucasus herald the coming of Cold War II? Or is it a Russian invitation to the West to reshape the global status quo that has prevailed since the end of Cold War I?
Russias military is certainly not fit for a global confrontation with the West. Not only did Russian intelligence fail to catch the coming Georgian attack on South Ossetia, but Russias electronic warfare system and ill-equipped ground troops looked like outdated Soviet-era relics.
Then again, a war does not have to display state-of-the-art weaponry to convey a powerful political message. After all, the US global leverage is dwindling even as its army remains the most sophisticated military machine in history. By showing that the US has lost its monopoly on the unilateral use of force and by invading a US ally which even the Soviet Union never dared Russia blatantly challenged the Pax Americana that emerged from the US victory in the Cold War.
The war in Georgia could not have happened if the US had not mishandled its global hegemony so disastrously. The US entered a calamitous war in Iraq, missed more than one opportunity to engage Irans revolutionary regime, pushed for unending expansion of NATO onto the doorstep of Russia and haughtily ignored Russias protests against the deployment of missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Under the cover of the war on terror, the US played into Russias fear of encirclement through its military penetration into Central Asian countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
In its quest to counter what it sees as a hostile US strategy of creating American Cubas on its doorstep, the Kremlin is promoting alliances with Raul Castros Cuba and Hugo Chavezs Venezuela.
In the Middle East, Russia is doing everything to regain some of the footholds it had in the past with the aim of sidelining the US as the sole global actor in the region. Syrian President Bashar al-Assads recent visit to Moscow is a transparent manifestation of the potential for a renewed alliance.
Russia continues to place hurdles before the US proposals for sanctions on Iran, has signed with it lavish energy contracts and is about to sell it advanced aerial systems aimed at thwarting a possible Israeli or US attack. Likewise, the Russians have just erased much of Iraqs debt and agreed to lucrative oil drilling deals.
One victim of the US post-Cold War unilateralism has been the transatlantic alliance. The US drive to expand NATO is not shared by all its allies, and Europe is in no mood to follow in the footsteps of Georgias impulsive president and be dragged by the ex-Soviet Baltic states and Poland into a confrontation with Russia. Europe, dependent as it is on Russian energy supplies, is not prepared for a new Cold War, and its alternative to Russian oil Iran is not palatable to the Americans.
A return to a Cold War strategy is clearly not in the Wests interest. Threats to expel Russia from the G8 or keep it out of the WTO will only increase its sense of isolation, strengthen its authoritarianism and push it into the role of a revolutionary anti-status quo power in the Soviet Unions old sphere of influence and beyond. Russian minorities still waiting to be redeemed in Ukraine, the Baltic states and Moldova are potential triggers for Russias neo-imperialism.
But, as a power burdened with too many domestic ills and a chronic sense of insecurity along its vast and dangerously depopulated borders, Russia cannot be interested in a Cold War II, either. Its recent agreement with China on border demarcation notwithstanding, Russia can never be assured of Chinas ultimate intentions as a colossal power hungry for raw materials for its booming economy and living space for its massive population.
As the war in the Caucasus has shown, the global economy does not offer a foolproof guarantee against war. But it is one thing to take a calculated risk, as the Russians did in rightly assuming that the West would not go to war over Georgia; it is another thing for Russia to jeopardize its colossal economic gains of recent years in an all-out confrontation with the West.
Indeed, the war in Georgia has already thrown Russia into the most severe financial crisis since its virtual bankruptcy in 1998; it lost US$17 billion in capital flight in just one week. The Moscow stock exchange lost 15 percent of its value last month, and Russias central bank forecasts a 25 percent decline in foreign investment this year.
Russia must seek genuine strategic partnership with the US and the latter must understand that, when excluded and despised, Russia can be a major global spoiler. Ignored and humiliated by the US since the Cold War ended, Russia needs integration into a new global order that respects its interests as a resurgent power, not an anti-Western strategy of confrontation.
Shlomo Ben-Ami is a former Israeli foreign minister who now serves as the vice president of the Toledo International Center for Peace in Spain.
#1
As I recall the "Cold War" was a time of unparalled growth, new electronics every other day (It seemed) and prosperity.
I vote YES for "Cold War II. We badly need another growth spurt.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
09/04/2008 13:26 Comments ||
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#2
Well goodness. It seems I should crawl into a hole, pull it in after me, and hope nobody sees the lump I make under the rug. Vice president of the Toledo International Center for Peace in Spain? The kind of authority born to be believed!
#7
Old military technology? Not anymore. Russian blogs are reporting that Russian troops captured the most sophisticated American and Israeli technology, during the intervention. And who started that war? The 9 Monitors of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will be issuing their report shortly. Der Spiegel claims they will blame Georgia.
#9
The OSCE is nobody's puppet. President Bush will take notice of their report. Captured infantry from Georgia's Telavi Barracks have admitted that the infiltration to the zone from where Saakashvili ordered a 6.5 hour barrage, began while he was on state television offering autonomy to South Ossetia. Within 10 hours half of SO's population was in exile. We don't need to lie to support peace and security.
Just remember the words of Captain John Parker uttered on the morning of April 19, 1775. Tradition reports his order at Lexington Green to be "Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
#13
INTERFAX > IRAN PROTESTS LAYING OF PIPLEINES ACROSS THE CASPIAN SEA. This is more MSM-NET evidence that ANTI-US/NATO ANGRY RUSSIA IS COVERTLY MORE SCARED OF NUCLEAR IRAN/ISLAMISM [Center of Russia], + ACTUALLY DESIRES THE US-NATO/EU TO SET UP VIABLE MIL PRESENCE ALL OVER ITS PERIPHERY.
RUSSIA > "D *** NG IT, IFF THE US-NATO/EU WON'T HELP ME PROTECT MYSELF AGZ MY OWN ANTI-US ALLY NUCLEAR IRAN/ISLAM, I'LL NUKE THE WORLD, D *** YOU, INTO GLOW-IN-THE-DARK SMITHEREENIES, AND DON'T YOUSE ever Ever EVER E-V-E-R EEEVVVVEEEEERRRRRR EVVVVAAAAHHHHH FORGET WHAT I NEVER TOLD YOU"!
2008-2012 [2016] > SITZKRIEG??? IMO IRAN will be "pushing the envelope" agz the US + ISRAEL iff it fails to unilater conduct a formal nuke test(s).
9-11/WOT > RADICAL ISLAM = IRAN IS WAGING ITS JIHAD TO VALIDATE ITSELF, PRECLUDE USSR-STYLE IMPLOSION, + TRANSFORM INTO A PAN-DIMENSIONAL GLOBAL FORCE ON PAR [iff not SUPERIOR] VV US-WEST + JUDEO-CHRISTIANITY, NOT TO REMAIN IN MINOR/LESSOR STATUS.
RADICAL ISLAM > IS NOT ABSOLUT DEFEATED, BUT NEITHER HAS IT ACHIEVED PARITY = SUPERIORITY EITHER.
*AN "ANGRY RUSSIA" IS AS MUCH A PROB FOR NUKE-+ OWG CALIPHATE-AMBITIOUS RADICAL ISLAM AS FOR THE US-ALLIES.
It again shows why, despite any rhetoric to the contray, NO CAMP OR SIDE DESIRES "ARMISTICE",
"STATUS QUO", "DETENTE" OR "MUTUAL CO-EXISTENCE", ETC. UNLESS I'VE MISSED SOMETHING, RADICAL ISLAM WILL NOT ACCEPT BEING SECOND-TIER TO THE US-ALLIES NOR RUSSIA NOR ANY "MODERATE" = "NON-ALIGNED" POWERS.
On another note, BOTH THE US + RUSSIA, etc. HAVE PROCLAIMED THERE CAN BE "NO RETURN TO THE COLD WAR" [BIPOLAR NUC DETENTE + CO-EXISTENCE + MAD] - what more a return to a COLD WAR II or even III???
IOW, there can be no "COLD WAR II" BECUZ THE US-ALLIES, ANGRY RUSSIA, + RADICAL ISLAM DON'T WANT ONE!
Ive been trying to convince my fellow conservatives that they have been wasting their time in a fruitless quest for a new Ronald Reagan to emerge and lead our party and our nation. I insisted that wed never see his like again because he was one of a kind.
I was wrong!
Wednesday night I watched the Republican National Convention on television and there, before my very eyes, I saw my Dad reborn; only this time he's a she.
And what a she!
In one blockbuster of a speech, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin resurrected my Dads indomitable spirit and sent it soaring above the convention center, shooting shock waves through the cynical medias assigned spaces and electrifying the huge audience with the kind of inspiring rhetoric we havent heard since my Dad left the scene.
This was Ronald Reagan at his best -- the same Ronald Reagan who made the address known now solely as The Speech, which during the Goldwater campaign set the tone and the agenda for the rebirth of the traditional conservative movement that later sent him to the White House for eight years and revived the moribund GOP.
Last night was an extraordinary event. Widely seen beforehand as a make-or-break effort -- either an opportunity for Sarah Palin to show that she was the happy warrior that John McCain assured us she was, or a disaster that would dash McCains presidential hopes and send her back to Alaska, sadder but wiser.
Obviously un-intimidated by either the savage onslaught to which the left-leaning media had subjected her, or the incredible challenge she faced -- and oozing with confidence -- she strode defiantly to the podium and proved she was everything and even more than John McCain told us.
Much has been made of the fact that she is a woman. What we saw last night, however, was something much more than a just a woman accomplishing something no Republican woman has ever achieved. What we saw was a red-blooded American with that rare, God-given ability to rally her dispirited fellow Republicans and take up the daunting task of leading them -- and all her fellow Americans -- on a pilgrimage to that shining city on the hill my father envisioned as our nations real destination.
In a few words she managed to rip the mask from the faces of her Democratic rivals and reveal them for what they are -- a pair of old-fashioned liberals making promises that cannot be kept without bankrupting the nation and reducing most Americans to the status of mendicants begging for their daily bread at the feet of an all-powerful government.
Most important, by comparing her own stunning record of achievement with his, she showed Barack Obama for the sham that he is, a man without any solid accomplishments beyond conspicuous self-aggrandizement.
Like Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin is one of us. She knows how most of us live because thats the way she lives. She shares our homespun values and our beliefs, and she glories in her status as a small-town woman who put her shoulder to the wheel and made life better for her neighbors.
Her astonishing rise up from the grass-roots, her total lack of self-importance, and her ordinary American values and modest lifestyle reveal her to be the kind of hard-working, optimistic, ordinary American who made this country the greatest, most powerful nation on the face of the earth.
As hard as you might try, you wont find that kind of plain-spoken, down-to-earth, self-reliant American in the upper ranks of the liberal-infested, elitist Democratic Party, or in the Obama campaign.
Sarah Palin didnt go to Harvard, or fiddle around in urban neighborhood leftist activism while engaging in opportunism within the ranks of one of the nations most corrupt political machines, never challenging it and going along to get along, like Barack Obama.
Instead she took on the corrupt establishment in Alaska and beat it, rising to the governorship while bringing reforms to every level of government she served in on her way up the ladder.
Welcome back, Dad, even if youre wearing a dress and bearing children this time around.
#1
The best thing of all is she's 42. Ronald Reagan was battling memory and age issues during his last term.
If she becomes President in 2012, she will have none of those problems. She is also giving every Republican and Reagan Democrat a reason to vote against the Democrats.
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/04/2008 17:58 Comments ||
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I think this is satire.....but some of the commenters are deadly serious.
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
09/04/2008 14:55 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
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#1
Nope. I think it's serious...
I have actual responsibilities, said Jacqueline del Valle, a community organizer in the Bronx. If Mayor Giuliani and President Bush cared more about non working people instead of just people who can hire high-powered lobbyists, maybe I wouldnt have so much responsibility. Maybe non working people would have an easier time in America today. But thats not our reality, and they dont have to mock us while were trying to clean up their mess.
I fixed it. Actual "working people" have little need for these folks. They're too busy working. Probably to pay these "community activists" salaries.
#4
lots of people who dont live in the south bronx? Well considering its got a pop of what, a few hundred thousand, and the USA has a pop of 300 million plus, sure.
I dont know why a community organizer in the bronx is supposed to help folks in alabama or dallas or chicago though.
#5
or do you mean lots of people who work dont live in slums? yeah. Depends on how much someone makes, how many kids, if their spouse works, if they have a spouse, if they have health insurance, what their health is like, what there other problems are like. Life is complicated, and while its great that lots of people have enough to live well, and to build their communities on their own, or live in the kinds of communities that dont need to be organized cause no one would ever build a polluting facility there, cause the land is too costly, or would wipe it out for a highway, or would need to fight city hall to get basic services, theres some places where, well, its different.
#6
there was a time, you know, not taht long ago, when conservatives seemed to acknowledge that was the case - they thought compassion was needed, and that our main failing was excluding faith based solutions.
Are you guys now running to the right of W on poverty? Its beginning to seem that way.
#7
Just what the hell does a "community organizer" actually do? What do they produce? I have a job. I have to produce at that job. It can be measured. No one owes me a damn thing except the payment for labor already done.
Just guessing, but I suspect their main job is "suck at the government teat and persuade others to do the same, knowing full well that the government's money actually comes out of the pockets of people who work and PRODUCE something. And thinking they're owed other people's hard-earned money."
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/04/2008 15:54 Comments ||
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#9
The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on television when were trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have destroyed."
Let's see, we need Community Organizers because Republicans go into the communities and cause failure.
They write graffiti on the walls, vandalize the infrastructure, throw trash in the streets and burn unoccupied buildings.
Then they set up crack houses and force children to quit school. Finally they get more that 50% our the community's young women pregnant and then abandon them to raise the children as single mothers.
That covers some of evil the Republicans do in communities. They need Community Organizers to protect the communities. It's sort of like the Sons of Iraq (Awakening Councils). Maybe they should set up checkpoints to keep the Republicans out.
#10
Are you guys now running to the right of W on poverty? Its beginning to seem that way.
Maybe we're sick of paying for it when we're barely getting by ourselves. Maybe we're sick of standing in line at the grocery store and watching the food stamp card come out and then watching mom and the kids load it all up in the Land Cruiser or the Lexus. Oh, yeah, I have seen it. Maybe we're sick of being called mean spirited right wing bigots that aren't doing enough or don't have enough compassion by people like you.
#11
Did Obama work for ACORN specifically? Just curious.
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
09/04/2008 16:18 Comments ||
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#12
'Hawk, a lot of us conservatives participate in the relief of poverty through St. Vincent de Paul and Habitat and similar organizations--contributing and volunteering--or just by helping deserving people one on one. A family down the street from us lost their home and father and what amounts to all their worldly goods in a fire. People in our town raised tens of thousands of dollars to help them replace furniture and clothes and replace the lost income while the mom fights with the insurance companies. All of this was ad hoc, spontaneously organized; we didn't need no Harvard-educated community organizers.
The objection to "community organizer" is not that we're against the relief of poverty, it's a bunch of other things:
-- Sen. Obama claims his experience as a "community organizer" prepares him to be president, but Gov. Palin's experience as a mayor and, you know, governor is not as valuable.
-- Sen. Obama has never adequately explained what a community organizer does, or what he accomplished when he was one.
-- A lot of us suspect a community organizer is someone who more often than not runs around collecting grant money but never quite produces tangible results--despite the best of intentions. (See, also, e.g., "Social Worker.")
-- Social services agencies tend to care about budget size and "units of service delivered," but not about actually solving people's problems. (I'm involved wth a nonprofit that's trying to promote a results-oriented model, and you'd be amazed at the resistance we get from the social services industry. E-mail me and I'll direct you to the organization's website so you can learn more.)
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 16:29 Comments ||
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#13
"running to the right of W on poverty?"
Maybe we're just getting a little tired of having people with Ivy League educations, million dollar homes, $165,000 senate salaries, and congressional health care telling us that we need to share the wealth.
#14
-- Sen. Obama has never adequately explained what a community organizer does, or what he accomplished when he was one.
-- A lot of us suspect a community organizer is someone who more often than not runs around collecting grant money but never quite produces tangible results--despite the best of intentions. (See, also, e.g., "Social Worker.")
Steve Graham over at Hog on Ice offered another possibility: it's just a fancy name for "ward heeler."
#16
Oh Darrelll, dontcha know? What is our is theirs and what is theirs is none of our biz.
LH, that was truly inane. Not sure where to start, but please understand that social workers/community organizers are not interested in fighting poverty, that is a feel-good cover, their purpose is to create dependency. They need poverty, else they would be out of job.
#18
Spike, of course, the man has to want to fish. If he'd rather get the fish for free, and people continue to give it to him ..
And of course there is that old joke about "Teach a man to fish and he'll sit in a boat all day and drink beer."
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
09/04/2008 17:10 Comments ||
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#19
LH, I've done charity work for the poor and worked in "the community" my entire adult life, while having at least one and sometimes two jobs.
However, during the course of my volunteer work, I've had the distinct displeasure to encounter several of these professional "community organizers".
I'll tell you who the bulk of these "community organizers" are. They're the type of arrogant, conceited, group victim ideology, devoid of humility scum who believe that they are God on Earth, and that working in the for-profit private sector would soil their very existence. They don't actually get their hands dirty dealing with the needy directly, but instead pontificate about what others should do, and more specifically, how much money they should fork over. The truth is, that almost to a person, they lack the intelligence and work ethic to succeed in the real private sector, and resent anyone who succeeds there.
I can guarantee that my effort over decades of volunteer work has had more of a positive, transformative effect on the needy than any ten professional "community organizers" combined.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/04/2008 17:35 Comments ||
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#20
I welcome any and all sunshine to bath the community organizers here in Chicago.
Most of us have known Sarah Palin for about 7 days now, and I have a working understanding of what she has spent her time in public service doing... I know what a mayor is, and what a governor does.
Yet Barak only wants to block access to any understanding of what he did when he burned through $110 million on a couple hundred Chicago public schools.
#22
“The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on television when we’re trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have destroyed."
Let's be clear: Chicago is and has been a Democratic fiefdom since Hizzoner Da Mayor, Daley the Elder, Richard J., won in 1957. Repooblicans didn't destroy the south and west sides of da city.
And Barack Obama didn't rebuild any of it. The public 'Section 8' housing he worked on was a scam that enriched the developers and left the housing units worse off than before. The Annenberg Challenge for the Chicago public schools was, in the review by the Annenberg Foundation itself, ineffective (except for spreading money around to Bill Ayers' friends).
You can't point to a single thing that Barack Obama rebuilt. You really can't point to much that any community organizer has rebuilt on the south side.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/04/2008 19:42 Comments ||
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#23
And one more point: if we ever subjected the non-profit 'community' organizations to the same financial and fiduciary scrutiny we subjected the average Fortune 2000 business, the prisons wouldn't be big enough to hold all the malefactors.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/04/2008 19:46 Comments ||
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#24
Knowledge question? What exactly is a "community organizer"? Would "social worker" be another word for it?
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/04/2008 19:47 Comments ||
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#25
It's a term first heard here in the US in leftwing activism from the 1960s tied to organizing for political pressure or protest.
#28
Knowledge question? What exactly is a "community organizer"? Would "social worker" be another word for it?
Not quiet a social worker. More like a community agitator.
This from wiki
1940 to 1960
#30
Knowledge question? What exactly is a "community organizer"? Would "social worker" be another word for it?
European Conservative, social workers are local government employees whose brief is to protect the widow and the orphan from rampaging fate. My maternal grandmother was the first woman in Germany to hold that job: in her town she introduced and enforced the idea that fathers could not abuse their children to the point of beating them to death, if I understand family tales correctly.
Community organizers are political animals whose job it is to get the poor neighborhood to protest the chosen cause until the local government acknowledges the protest. Possibly something will be done after, but the key goal is the televised meeting with the city mayor.
PLAYBOY: The assumption behind the Administration's Silent Majority thesis is that most of the middle class is inherently conservative. How can even the most skillful organizational tactics unite them in support of your radical goals?
ALINSKY: Conservative? That's a crock of crap. Right now they're nowhere. But they can and will go either of two ways in the coming years -- to a native American fascism or toward radical social change. Right now they're frozen, festering in apathy, leading what Thoreau called "lives of quiet desperation:" They're oppressed by taxation and inflation, poisoned by pollution, terrorized by urban crime, frightened by the new youth culture, baffled by the computerized world around them. They've worked all their lives to get their own little house in the suburbs, their color TV, their two cars, and now the good life seems to have turned to ashes in their mouths. Their personal lives are generally unfulfilling, their jobs unsatisfying, they've succumbed to tranquilizers and pep pills, they drown their anxieties in alcohol, they feel trapped in longterm endurance marriages or escape into guilt-ridden divorces. They're losing their kids and they're losing their dreams. They're alienated, depersonalized, without any feeling of participation in the political process, and they feel rejected and hopeless. Their utopia of status and security has become a tacky-tacky suburb, their split-levels have sprouted prison bars and their disillusionment is becoming terminal.
They're the first to live in a total mass-media-oriented world, and every night when they turn on the TV and the news comes on, they see the almost unbelievable hypocrisy and deceit and even outright idiocy of our national leaders and the corruption and disintegration of all our institutions, from the police and courts to the White House itself. Their society appears to be crumbling and they see themselves as no more than small failures within the larger failure. All their old values seem to have deserted them, leaving them rudderless in a sea of social chaos. Believe me, this is good organizational material.
The despair is there; now it's up to us to go in and rub raw the sores of discontent, galvanize them for radical social change. We'll give them a way to participate in the democratic process, a way to exercise their rights as citizens and strike back at the establishment that oppresses them, instead of giving in to apathy. We'll start with specific issues -- taxes, jobs, consumer problems, pollution -- and from there move on to the larger issues: pollution in the Pentagon and the Congress and the board rooms of the megacorporations. Once you organize people, they'll keep advancing from issue to issue toward the ultimate objective: people power. We'll not only give them a cause, we'll make life goddamn exciting for them again -- life instead of existence. We'll turn them on.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
09/04/2008 21:22 Comments ||
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I couldn't find a German translation.
Which is probably a good thing.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
09/04/2008 21:51 Comments ||
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#38
I've found Sozialwerker and Betreuer doing an on-line search, European Conservative. I'll check my Duden later, and post the result in the O Club -- look in the yellow box in the right margin for the link. I'll ask AutoBartender to set aside a good Belgian beer for you on my tab. (I don't drink the stuff myself, but I'm told it's quite good.)
#39
What are you all stuck on the community organizer thing. Obama is 100 fold brighter than dull witted McCain. Better looking too.
Posted by: General Comment ||
09/04/2008 23:16 Comments ||
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#40
"or do you mean lots of people who work dont live in slums? yeah. Depends on how much someone makes, how many kids, if their spouse works, if they have a spouse, if they have health insurance, what their health is like, what there other problems are like. Life is complicated,"
-it sure is, it gets infinitely more complicated when some people make the same stupid fucking choices over and over and over again. I am sick of paying for others poor life decisions.
I usually give to children's charities or anything to do w/disabled vets.
How many kids one has or if they're married is a choice on their part. If you decide to have kids before college and then think the gov't (i.e. we the tax paying people) owes you a college education - you are seriously wrong. If you want to have a bunch of kids but are too stupid to do a simple budget and will go into the spin cycle - your problem not mine. Poverty is a number. If you have a plasma t.v. you are not poor. If you have a.c. you are not poor. If you have a car less than 4 yrs old you are not fucking poor.
Here's the good news: Women have become so politically powerful that even the anti-feminist right wing -- the folks with a headlock on the Republican Party -- are trying to appease the gender gap with a first-ever female vice president. We owe this to women -- and to many men too -- who have picketed, gone on hunger strikes or confronted violence at the polls so women can vote. We owe it to Shirley Chisholm, who first took the "white-male-only" sign off the White House, and to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hung in there through ridicule and misogyny to win 18 million votes.
But here is even better news: It won't work. This isn't the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie. That's your outdated, 20th century vision of feminism. What makes you so sure feminism has not passed you by?
Feminism isn't allowed to change. Women are all about diversity so long as they're all the same.
Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing Hello?? Maverik McCain is only the most liberal candidate Republicans could offer! and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton's candidacy stood for -- and that Barack Obama's still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, "Somebody stole my shoes, so I'll amputate my legs." She has no clue who Sarah Palin is, and what she stands for other than her than what she has been told by here apparatchik operatives.
I think Steinem knows precisely who Sarah Palin is, and that's why she's frightened. Sarah Palin is the new feminist: she doesn't whine for respect, she earns it.
This is not to beat up on Palin.
No, no, certainly not.
I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can't do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn't say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, She was the governor of a state that's right next to RUSSIA. with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience. You freakin Liberal hypocrite.
This argument is too easy to flip. Sure, Joe has 37 years experience: how many times has he been wrong? Just in recent history, he was wrong about the surge, wrong about the war on terrorism, wrong about surveillance, and wrong on Gitmo. Page through Joe's statements over the years and you'll find a lightweight who isn't taken seriously by most foreign policy experts, even in his own party.
Palin has been honest about what she doesn't know. When asked last month about the vice presidency, she said, "I still can't answer that question until someone answers for me: What is it exactly that the VP does every day?" When asked about Iraq, she said, "I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq."
She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, ...
Why was that, Gloria? Why was Frank Murkowski unpopular? Could it be because he saw political office the way so many in the the elite class does, as a way to enrich himself, his family and his friends? Where 'the people' were thought of as secondary when they were thought of at all? Frank Murkowski appointed his own daughter to the U.S. Senate and then wondered why Sarah Palin went after him. He didn't have a clue, and neither does Gloria.
...and she's won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain's campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn't know it's about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them.
That's just rich coming from Gloria Steinem. Affirmative action has been all about the surreptitious lowering of standards. Ask any college admissions officer.
Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate's views on "God, guns and gays" ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency. Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter, you hypocrite.
Once again, a liberal dares to call Palin 'unqualified' without explaining how that label can't apply to Barack Obama.
So let's be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can't tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act. So let's be clear, if she was a lesbian, atheist, anti-gun, eco-nazi Code-Pink veggan, you would like her, huh?
Hutchison wouldn't have energized the party. Snowe would have caused a revolt. And to be clear, had McCain chosen either Ms. Steinem's message today would be the same.
Palin's value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women's wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves "abstinence-only" programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers' millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn't spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger. You don't even know where ANWR is let alone where and how much they propose to drill, you arrogant tool.
I don't doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn't just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn't just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn't just echo McCain's pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.
So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, "women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership," so he may be voting for Palin's husband.
Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.
Republicans may learn they can't appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.
And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can't be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.
This could be huge. Not as huge as your ego, and what you do not know about Palin and Alaska.
An unborn baby, even one concieved in an act of violence, is a unique and totally innocent human life. It is always and everywhere immoral to directly and deliberately kill an innocent person.
I'm all for hanging the rapist, and for providing the lady every aid and comfort. However, killing the baby does not punish the guilty, nor comfort the victim.
There's an article in a back issue of Envoy Magazine which I don't have time to drill down to, written by a nun in Bosnia who was raped and impregnated, which explains this better than I eevr will. Suggest you go read it.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 14:17 Comments ||
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#6
She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular,
Umm, yeah, isn't that how challengers usually beat incumbents?
#3
Nope, Steinem never had kids, at least, not that anyone knows about. So she's not a "breeder".
There's so much here that's laughable, but what's sad is the way that Obama is turning out every woman he can to do his dirty work for him in the media. A man saying snotty things to a woman doesn't nearly have the same effect as a bunch of bitchy ol' hags harping from the sidelines, and that crafty bastard knows it.
I am heartened to see the Republican women defending one of their own. I just wish that the Democrat women would have done the same for Hillary.
(Now before the rest of you jump my ass for saying that, or start up with "oh no, not the Hildabeest!" crap....keep in mind, the nastiest attacks on Hillary from within her own party came from other women. Pelosi et al could have said something but just sat back and let her take all that flak alone. All they are doing now for the most part is dusting off some of the crap they said about Hillary and flinging it on Palin, with a few new twists, of course. And they wonder why a big chunk of the PUMA vote isn't heading to the Messiah.....like duh, you idiots!)
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
09/04/2008 13:31 Comments ||
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#4
So she alienated the PETA and angry lezbos.
Haven't they always voted for the jack-ass party anyway? So what are the Trunks losing?
Anyone? Anyone?
#5
one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden's 37 years' experience
It might take Palin a month to familiarize herself with the more salient features of Biden's record in and out of the Senate. My guess is that'll be all the ammunition she'll need in the debate.
Sarah Joan of Arc isn't as catchy as Sarah Barracuda, yet even so, the throng called for her to lead them, an unknown from the edge of nowhere, a woman with no experience in the great city of light.
So Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the conservative running mate for Sen. John McCain, hit the necessary themes in the most anticipated speech of the Republican convention: pummeling the high priests of the Washington media establishment, pushing for oil drilling in the wilderness even though the Democrats don't like it, and promising political reform while reveling in her small-town ways.
"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment," Palin told the delegates. "And I've learned quickly these last few days, that if you are not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion. I'm going to Washington to serve the great people of this country."
Despite the Republican spin, Palin is a political animal, a real human with the capacity for ambition and revenge and all that comes with it, including all the flaws. As I mentioned a few days ago, she is not some plaster saint to be venerated, not a Mother Teresa with a Buck knife. Her record and her background must be fully investigated if she is to be a heartbeat from the presidency, and her conflicts examined, like those of Joe Biden and his son the lobbyist.
But there's been a zeal to the Palin media vetting. Reporters here have acted like perturbed clerks, snippy that established procedure wasn't followed when McCain surprised them with Palin. Perhaps he should have gone to a party at Sally Quinn's house and asked for opinions. Years ago, McCain might have done so, back when he shamelessly sucked up to the press, but they've left him for Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama and they're not coming back. So McCain had no obligation to go through that ridiculous pantomime expected by some in my business, who think politicians actually give a rat's ears about sitting down and consulting with journalists.
And there's that family issue with Palin. Her 17-year-old daughter is unmarried and pregnant. Palin herself has a 4-month-old infant with special needs. The suggestion has been made that if she's such a good mom, she should stay home with her family rather than run with McCain. If Palin were a Democrat, such talk would be grounds for serious shunning. But Palin is a conservative. She receives no such protection.
She also poses the greatest threat yet to the Obama reform narrative. The cynical epic has become the establishment media bedtime story, with Obama as the young King Arthur riding forth to promise change. In this, the Washington Beltway media colony has been his eager Merlin, hoping to guide him, cleaving desperately to the theme that he's some kind of reformer, even though Obama is a politician backed by Chicago's Daley machine and never once challenged the political corruption in Chicago and Illinois. Not ever.
The contrast with Palinwho actually went after the Republican Party bosses in Alaska on the corruption issueis profound and challenging for the Obama-friendly media that willfully ignore his lack of leadership on the reform front, yet are consumed to find out if Palin has an overdue library book.
In her speech, Palin also pulled an old political trick, publicly reveling in what is considered a deficitthat she's from a tiny town, almost as far as geographically possible from the sophisticated salons of Washington. Electoral vote-rich Pennsylvania and Ohio don't have salons either, but they do have small towns.
The Republicans will remind them relentlessly in the weeks ahead that former community organizer Obamain a foolish display of egosaid that small-town folk deal with an uncertain world by clinging to their guns and their religion.
"I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town. I was just your average hockey mom, and signed up for the PTA . . . because I wanted to make my kids' public education better," said the former mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 8,471). "And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves. I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."
Expect Palin to knock squirrels out of trees across Ohio and Pennsylvania, along with other critters, fur and feathered. Unlike other candidates, she'll probably do her own shooting and skinning, and maybe roast them on sticks, with a pinch of salt, demanding reporters eat some, so they can say it tastes like chicken.
St. Joan was a threat to the established order, and Palin is being positioned as a threat. Unfortunately, the French handed Joan over to the English, and she was burned. I don't think we know yet what happens to Sarah.
#1
Perhaps he should have gone to a party at Sally Quinn's house and asked for opinions.
Heh. Sally Quinn was on the O'Reilly Factor last night and said pretty much the same thing. I kid you not.
(No, I don't normally watch that show, I just got mixed up and thought Obama was going to be on there last night. He's going to be on there tonight instead.)
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
09/04/2008 14:47 Comments ||
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#2
Does this pic qualify for a spot on the RD-S&T-P?
(especially since this week seems to be the 'Extreme Legs' series)
Twenty years after Ronald Reagan left office, Republicans who have long missed him may have found a future Margaret Thatcher. If John McCain wins, conservatives may find one of the most enduring accomplishments of his term will have been what he did before it started: helping to fill the Republican Party's future talent bench with such a fresh and compelling figure.
Sarah Palin is a conviction politician, a naturally compelling speaker and someone who can relate to her audience on very human terms. America has just learned why Mrs. Palin enjoys the highest approval ratings of any governor in America.
Liberal commentators glumly noted the thunderous applause in the convention hall last night. But they could do precious little to attack. Even Keith Olbermann, MSNBC's official attack dog, could muster only this as commentary on Mrs. Palin's performance: "People who like this sort of thing will find this ... the sort of thing they like."
Mrs. Palin accomplished several things last night. First, she introduced herself and her story to the American people in a compelling and warm manner, complete with effective pictures of her proud family. Secondly, she praised John McCain's leadership, service to country and independence in a way that made him come alive. Thirdly, she effectively deflected the media and liberal criticism of her by saying they really represented an attack on the small-town and suburban values she grew up with. Lastly, she skewered Barack Obama with gusto but without meanness. Her line about her job as a small-town mayor being "sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities" brought the hall to its feet in a frenzy.
Some hard-bitten political observers I know were uncharacteristically impressed with the Palin speech. Hal Stratton, a former Attorney General of New Mexico, wrote to me as follows: "That's what we out west call openin' a whole can of whip a on your opponents."
Other observers were more restrained, but still impressed. "She passed her first major test, and if the reaction of the crowd in the hall is any indication, with flying colors," says Peter Brown, the deputy director of the Quinnipiac Poll. "So much for the comparisons with Dan Quayle, who couldn't have given that speech if his life depended on it. Obviously, Sarah Palin probably went down better in Warren, Michigan than she did in Washington, D.C. -- but that was the whole point of her speech and her candidacy." Indeed, while Mrs. Palin certainly won't swing any deeply blue states in John McCain's direction, she may have an impact in swaying independent voters as well as boosting GOP turnout in swing states such as Colorado, Nevada and Michigan.
One of the standard operating theories this Election Year is that Barack Obama and the Democrats are much more energized, excited and willing to work hard for victory in November.
After Sarah Palin's remarkably effective speech, I don't think any pundits or politicians will be able to count on a decisive Democratic enthusiasm edge. Sarah Palin electrified the hall, and from what I can tell from my e-mail inbox that excitement is being replicated in living rooms across the country.
#2
"People who like this sort of thing will find this ... the sort of thing they like."
Clearly, for Olbermann, that's speechless.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/04/2008 6:00 Comments ||
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#3
Sarah is a total game changer. Brought to you by McCain the maverick RINO. What an INTERESTING world!
Posted by: Minister of funny walks ||
09/04/2008 6:26 Comments ||
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#4
Sarah-cuda. What a lady. Game on.
One of my favorite parts of the evening: the television camera cuts to young Willow (?) holding her baby brother Trig. The child is seen grooming her baby brother by slicking down his hair with spit. I'll wager she picked that up from her mom. So simple. So authentic. So sweet.
Kudos to Mr. McCain. He wasn't my first, second, or even third choice in the primaries. But he picked a winner to ride shotgun. My gut says this lady is destined for greatness. Thank you, Mac, for bringing her to our attention.
Coincidently, the lady is married to a guy named Todd.
At the end of her speech I recalled the words of another Todd from just a few years ago.
#5
She represents small-town America, America of 100 years ago. Today a majority of Americans live in big cities, dependent on government rather than themselves. The question is how many city people still wish they were independent, small-town 'hicks' vs. cosmopolitan 'elite.' How many suburbs are built on subdivided farms surrounded by working farms? How many of those suburbanites soon start demanding the surrounding farms be shut down because they don't like the smells and sounds that go with livestock? While I am impressed by Palin, I have little confidence in the majority of Americans these days. Useless, pseudo-intellectual twits and government dependents.
#6
Glenmore, I sometimes think like you do but on reflection I usually end up changing my mind. I truly do think that Americans, when properly apprised of the facts and presented with a real choice, will almost always make the right call, even if it's a tough one.
The problem comes when Americans don't have all the information they need to properly choose, or have the wrong information. Both of those problems are directly attributable to the MSM, which has deliberately lied to Americans for political gain for at least fifty years.
When the people who are delivering a country's news hate the country in question, it's not likely they'll do much to help that country's citizens make choices that will benefit them and their nation. Ernie Pyle and Ed Murrow would take up arms against their press brethren these days, and for good reason.
#7
Much to be said for small town America and it's heros. Our village had one Doctor, the late Paul Silus Nurenberg. He was a surgeon and a veteran of the US Army and the Euopean Theater of Operations in WWII. He kept a framed photograph of his fellow Army Combat Field Hospital colleagues on the wall of his office. You could call Doc Nurenberg at his residence any time, day or night. And for those who remember the term, he frequently made house calls.Yes, Doc and his lovely family were Jewish. The Nurenbergs were the only Jews in the entire town. He was, and remains an icon of the community. Give me the small town and small town folks anyday.
#8
City and suburbs are two very different cultures, Glenmore. Among other things, city voters are generally Democrats, suburban voters generally Republican. Most small towns, as far as I can tell, expanded into the nearby countryside and now function as suburbs of nearby cities. I live in one of those. We're soccer and softball families rather than hockey, and none of us would rather be country hicks, but we don't want the problems of the cities, either. Suburbanites are people with real jobs, accomplishing greater or lesser things, but those who don't work lose their houses. And the majority of Americans on government assistance? Where'd you get that?
#9
TW I'll agree that most don't want to be "hicks" but most also don't disparage the concept knowing that "hicks" are just as capable and intelligent as anyone.
The fact that "hick" is still a pejorative for the left shows how out of touch they are and how the force field of their narrative excludes any other views.
#10
Think Electoral College. Let the Democrats keep their islands of ideological purity. For one, Virginia is no longer in play.
Posted by: Minister of funny walks ||
09/04/2008 10:41 Comments ||
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#11
virginia is still in play, AFAIK. The kinds of folks who are wild about Palin werent that keen on Obama to begin with. Its the metro area suburbanites the GOP has lost here, and I dont see Palin as helping much there.
#12
majority of Americans on government assistance?
Not just WIC, or Social Security, but jobs, grants, student loans, farm subsidies, FEMA trailers, tariff protection, even tax deductions. The goal of government is to make everyone beholden to government somehow, and they have essentially succeeded.
#16
LH - I disagree. I am a "metro suburbanite" (Chicago, go figure) and folks in my 'burb are nuts about her. People everywhere appreciate authenticity. Obama bin Biden got none.
#17
I suspect even the Obamessaih chuckled a time or two. Probably did him some bloody good with all his constant fretting about... my pension, my social security, everyone's kids graduating from Harvard, midnight basketball, wat the Euro's are thinkin, Annenberg Papers, Pastor Jeremiah, criminal charges against "W", etc. Poor bastard, I doubt he gets much humour from across the breakfast table.
#18
A lot of the suburbanites I know just want to be thought of as being on the side that's with the in-group (although many others are ideologues of one or another side).
If you can change the conversation from "isn't that Obama guy inspiring" to "what does that Obama guy really think", you've accomplished a lot.
#19
This election is over. McCain needed to excite the base. He's done that. He's also expanding the party with women voters and parents of handicapped kids. Remember that Bammo was having trouble sealing the deal *before* the Palin pick. Now where will he go?
I suspect we'll continue to see close polls right up through the election, but those will be meaningless. Everyone knows you can construct a poll to return whatever answer you want. The media want a horse race, so that's the story we'll hear.
Once elected, McCain will disappoint early and often. Note that last night no one mentioned anything McCain's done after the war -- except supporting the surge, which is one thing he got right. McCain picked Palin because he wants to be president and he needs us to get there. The morning after the election the Republican party will wake up alone with a sore ass, a sticky back and $20 missing from its purse.
#20
Bammo was having trouble sealing the deal *before* the Palin pick. Now where will he go?
Straight into the gutter, that's what Dems do. But as I noted Friday: Palin is a tar baby, her selection invites condescending attacks from Obama and his bastions of elites and thus far they've shown that they just can't help going after her and her family on every level. The harder they hit her and the lower the blows are, the more popular she'll become.
#22
Down into the gutter goes the Obama campaign: Axelrod just said that Palin was merely, "... parroting what she'd been told." He doesn't get it, bad enough when the lefty bloggers and lefty media go after her but Obama's campaign calling her stupid completely destroys their carefully crafted "different kind of politician" message. And this guy thinks he's smart enough to run the country?
#23
Axelrod just said that Palin was merely, "... parroting what she'd been told."
Considering how The Obama can't even order at the drive-through window without the likes of Axelrod telling him what to say and how, I find that a particularly tasty irony.
Posted by: Grenter, Protector of the Geats ||
09/04/2008 13:14 Comments ||
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#24
This just in (for what it's worth): My better half (high school teacher in a very blue state and NEA member) reports that among her Democrat friends (we're both unenrolled), Palin's speech was very well received. This from the heart of an NEA citadel in a very blue state!
Posted by: Minister of funny walks ||
09/04/2008 13:59 Comments ||
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#25
Of course Palin said nothing about immigration.
and also, I've been looking into her comments about that $40 billion pipeline; it seems that while there will be little in the way of federal subsidies during construction, the price of natural gas may have to be guaranteed; that's a possible subsidy for the next generation
#29
Well, how much of her straight-from-my-innocent-little-heart speech was written by the same ELITIST snots that she - or they - condemn, rhetorically? The Dems dumped Sen Eagleton AFTER the convention; the GOP still has that option, should Palin have too many skeletons to ignore. She is already looking like a player piano, and they don't play on their own.
#30
Where'd ya get that little tidbit of info MEA7845, the editorial section?
Along the lines of 3dc I will be for the first time breaking my visible neutrality and putting up a sign. There are just too many reasons too and the left's since of maturity has put me over the edge. In fact it has inspired me to actively show the bo supporters around me what is being said and whether they agree with it or not, "Hey, this is the company you keep" and all.
And you know what, people can be writers without being elitists, and people can be elitists without any idea how to write, isn't that so MEA?
Tonight I flipped to CNN and was struck by the talking heads flipping out about the Giuliani/Palin mocking of community organizersas if the Obama team's dismissals of "small-town" mayors was fair play. The MSM networks are going ballistic at her speech and apparently never imagined that anyone would dare bite backand also at them, the 'elite media' of the press, no less!
Compared to what Kerry et al. said about McCain, Palin was no tougher on the other side, so it is odd to hear CNN female pundits suddenly shocked, shocked that a "woman" would dare attack a man like that, and that it may "not play" outside the hall. Like it or now we are back in a cultural and populist war, brought on by a week of liberal character assassination.
The Left made a terrible mistake in the manner they have smeared Palin, and now they seem appalled at the red-state authentic populist backlash which is a different sort than studied Bidenism, where one recalls a distant childhood, not the recent past, or the living present, to prove they are one with the people.
So things heat up and are getting ugly as they always seem to do by September in an election year. Today it was no accident in the wake of the attacks on Palin that suddenly Obama comes out with pro-abortion ads attacking the pro-life position of McCain. The timing is a sort of subtext about the current and recent Palin jr. and sr. pregnancies: apparently Team Obama want the viewer to see a pregnant teen-ager and a Down syndrome child and ponder something like: "under John McCain abortion in these cases would have been impossible."
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 01:15 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
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#1
It's gonna be an interesting election season:
The war hero and the real deal
VS
The empty suit and the stuffed shirt
Thanks GK for the apt terms.
Much more precise than my vague terms,
"When a Chicago machine political lawyer goes to Washington DC to grab power and grabs a lifelong liberal Democrat talking head as an accomplice in crime."
Please, win, Sarah, and send the talking heads of Washington and the media elite to their play pins at home for four years.
(The end of global warming is when Washington talking head mouths shut.)
Posted by: Sick and tired of Washington DC Politics ||
09/04/2008 2:08 Comments ||
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#4
The MSM networks are going ballistic at her speech and apparently never imagined that anyone would dare bite back--and also at them, the 'elite media' of the press, no less!
I anticipate that this will only get better and better. Talk about a Catch-22 situation. Every time she opens her mouth someone from The Establishment gets ripped, yet at the same time it sells press!
#5
It has been my observation that the Dems only reach for the abortion card directly when they are out of other issues which they think are winners or are very, very scared and desperate.
FWIW.
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/04/2008 5:51 Comments ||
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#6
"Forgive me God, but I love it so!"
Channeling Gen. Patton, Gorb?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/04/2008 6:39 Comments ||
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#7
I suspect that the abortion card is problematic with the dems because I remember reading somewhere (sorry, can't cite a source for this) that many democrats are anti-abortion, just like many republians are pro-abortion. I don't remember the percentage that cuts across party lines but it was bigger than I expected.
So playing the pro-abortion card against a woman who gave birth to a special needs baby (and celebrates her baby) and whose beautiful 17 year old daughter is going to give birth, is going to be a dangerous game for the democrats.
Let me tell you! Her line about special needs families having and advoacate in the White House seemed so heartfelt and sincere that it brought tears to my eyes. I don't have a special needs child, but I could feel the hope for those who do.
I want a bumper sticker that says "McCain/Palin because a woman's place is in the White House".
#10
These CNN dumf**ks are so dumbstruck that the whole country is laughing at their ignorance that they don't know what to do. Palin gave a superb speech and delivery of it. Much better than I expected she could do. Bravo ! But I thoroughly enjoyed both Mike Steele and Rudy too. Especially Rudy. Boy, did he kick the living shit out of the Magic Man or what ? And, he thoroughly enjoyed himself doing it. What a hoot! This might get McPain revved up. Let's hope so. Attack, Johnny, attack. You've got the ammo. Use it.
#11
The abortion card will not work as well as usual. An old white guy telling women they can't have abortions is very different from a youngish mother telling them they shouldn't, she didn't, and things work out okay.
And if Obama hints that the Down Syndrom baby should have been aborted, well he will look really cold.
#12
...if Obama hints that the Down Syndrom baby should have been aborted, well he will look really cold.
Many left wing pundits and activists already have. And boy do they look like the Eugenics Nazi fools they are. The Left/right of center is getting nervous by them and their constant below the belt attacks. I think the middle will warm quickly to Palin and be disgusted by the left at the same time and we will quickly see a Republican landslide in the making in October.
#15
Communist community activist in the south sido. Spend a lot of time throwing them down at the Bada Bing with Tony....and associates. Glad them days is over. "Do not resuscitate."
Too bad. Last night he actually had some interesting and intelligent things to say.
Aris could be a useful contributor to the knowledge base of Rantburg, but it appears he just can't control himself. I don't know what he said in the above posting, but based on previous screeds, if he could just learn the difference between snarky and obnoxious snotty, he could be a good contributor to the team. :-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/04/2008 13:11 Comments ||
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#20
That's been tried, Barb. More than once. We got tired of the pattern and he ceased being worth the mods' time to monitor whether he was contributing or being a PITA. He's still being a PITA by continuing to take advantage of Fred's openness, but his grafitti won't persist long before one of the mods comes by for cleanup.
#22
I wasn't complaining about y'all, lotp - the mods do a Herculean job as it is, without having to clean up Aris' (and others') droppings.
I'm just ruminating that a knowledgeable someone in Greece or thereabouts could be a valuable contributor to our community. Too bad Aris chose not to be that someone.
(I know you're out there lurking and Googling your name, Aris. Think about what I said. I'm sorry you blew it, but you're the one responsible for your banning.)
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/04/2008 14:33 Comments ||
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#23
by the way, youre "populist" attacked Obama for wanting to raise the so-called Death Tax. There is no Death tax. My mom and dad both died, and nobody payed any death tax. Cause the estates werent big enough. See its not a death tax, its actually an inheritance tax. Which most of the people she was speaking too will never pay.
Similarly most of what she had to say about economics was old fashioned economic royalism.
She spoke about 5 paragraphs on drilling for oil and nat gas, and about 1 for alternatives and coal altogether. And not a word on conservation of any kind. So much for taking the Russian and Middle eastern oil threat seriously.
Her husband is a proud member of the Steel Workers. She didnt say what she would do to help workers who want to organize but cant because of union busting techniques. Nor did she take on the Republicans who call union leaders "labor bosses".
Get away for a minute from the evilness of big cities and the Ivy League and the goodness of small towns and state schools. This woman is just another generic conservative Republican who speaks well (you guys know what i think of THAT) and is not from Washington (Jimmy Cahtuh says hi - so does the chosen one, in his own way). She aint gonna be the game changer you think.
#24
'Hawk, I make my living doing estate planning, so I know that of which I speak.
Most of my clients who have to worry about the federal estate tax are business owners--counting farms as a "business" because they are, really. They're "wealthy" in the sense that their net worth goes up over the threshold where the tax applies--but that wealth is in the form of a big illiquid asset. They either have to sell the business to pay the tax on it, or go through some convoluted gyrations to be able to keep it intact and functioning for the next generation. What you call "economic royalism" should be called "preserving the family legacy."
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 14:49 Comments ||
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#25
Right wing and left wing pundits and activists have said lots of vile things.
True, but the "official" ones on the left that take official campaign money and do official interviews have said the most vile things. If I was running as a dhimocrat, I would punt DailyKos and the DU out of my orbit so fast they would be near Pluto.
Also, with the Death tax was only repealed by Bush and Bambi wants to bring it back. Unfortunately, it was repealed too late for my Grandmother's estate. Uncle Same raped my relatives for 10% of everything. Our income is already double and triple taxed. We don't need another layer of secured assets that was set aside and already taxed like hell to be taxed again. Revolutions have been fought over this.
Example: The deceased's assets can be realized and also because the tax rate is determined by the value of the deceased's assets rather than the amount each inheritor receives. Neither the number of inheritors nor the size of each inheritor's portion factors into the calculations for rate of the Estate Tax.
So in my relative's case, a $250,000 dollar lump, to be broken up between her 4 children had $25,000 ripped out before anything else happened. And this is after it was taxed as income and then taxed as a capital gain.
So the money the Grandmother had spent 50+ years stowing away for her children kept getting nibbled at by the feds and then when it was given away, a bite was taken again. Personally, I see this as little more than highway robbery and a complete disregard for personal wealth and free enterprise.
#26
As for the Death Tax, the alleged reason is so that wealth does not get concentrated in a few families. Could some constitutional scholar enlighten me where in the Constitution that power is assigned to the federal government?
Eminent domain does not apply (or should not apply) to everything you own just because you die.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
09/04/2008 15:23 Comments ||
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#27
Most of my clients who have to worry about the federal estate tax are business owners--counting farms as a "business" because they are, really. They're "wealthy" in the sense that their net worth goes up over the threshold where the tax applies--but that wealth is in the form of a big illiquid asset. They either have to sell the business to pay the tax on it, or go through some convoluted gyrations to be able to keep it intact and functioning for the next generation. What you call "economic royalism" should be called "preserving the family legacy."
That can be addressed by raising the minimum level it applies, and making getting around the need to liquidate easier. You dont have to abolish it to make it work. And yeah, the fact that local business owners and farmers with NET worths of over half a million or a million pay the tax doesnt mean this is a tax that the majority of the rural working class is going to pay.
Aside from which, if ANYONE doesnt pay it, then its not a death tax. A death tax would be a tax you paid just for dying regardless of the size of your estate.
and yeah, I use the term economic royalism. If youre gonna use class war language, which Ms Palin seems quite free with, its gonna be used back at you.
#28
LH - I began a more detailed response but this isn't the proper forum for an airing of that particular dirty laundry. Suffice it to say that, unlike you, I have personal experience with the death tax and its surprising ramifications. It destroys small business, enriches the legal profession (that's me BTW), tears families apart, and results in a staggering amount of unnecessary an unproductive litigation and tax planning / evasion (legal and otherwise). Even when I don't agree with you you often make solid points but you're speaking from a position of base ignorance here; you have absolutely *NO* idea the damage this tax does and there's no way you could until it touches you in a very personal way.
#29
My mom and dad both died, and nobody payed any death tax. Cause the estates werent big enough
Translated: It doesn't affect me so what's the big deal? Why should I care if someone elses family farm or business has to be liquidated. If it is not my lifestyle being affected, why should I care?
#30
A relentless, poop-listed, self-proclaimed "basher" must get two or three readers before their post disappears. And irritates the mods, too. That can only be satisfying to someone with a warped mind.
#31
'Hawk, wht you don't appreciate is that the estate tax is a tax on upward mobility. People who start out with nothing get to be big enough to pay the tax withiout being big enough to feel it. People with dynastic wealth write a check and still have plenty left over. The old money crowd likes the tax because it keeps the children of the petit bourgeoisie and nouveau riche riffraff out of the country club.
Want to end "economic royalism?" Remove the barriers to upward mobility!
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 16:51 Comments ||
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#32
Well said Mike, very well said.
It's also worth noting, at least according to the last financial advisor I worked with, that the average heir blows nearly all of their inheritance in under two years. He asserted that this was uniformly true whether the inheritance was tens of thousands of dollars or tens of millions. If he's right the estate tax is useless since nearly all inherited wealth is quicly redistributed throughout the economy via teh private sector. There's little need for government intervention.
#33
"You dont have to abolish it to make it work...the fact that local business owners and farmers with NET worths of over half a million or a million pay the tax doesnt mean this is a tax that the majority of the rural working class is going to pay."
-since you put it that way, that makes it perfectly okay then. (sarcasm/off)
so long as it only fucks a few fellow Americans what's the big deal, right? My step-father is of self-made weath - came from the poorest of the poor in east Detroit, put himself through college and ended up owning a plethora of businesses over a 40 yr period..my family will prolly feel this one down the road.
everyone (rantburger posters excluded) seems to want to be rich but at the same time they want to revile those who are rich.
#34
"A relentless, poop-listed, self-proclaimed "basher" must get two or three readers before their post disappears. And irritates the mods, too. That can only be satisfying to someone with a warped mind."
Darrell, if you're referring to Mr. "A," you don't know the half of it. He actually e-mailed me a response to my (go-to-hell) response to one of his since-disappeared posts. That's just sad, and more than a little pathetic. Of course, I checked "mark as unsafe" and "junk" and dumped it.
I noticed he didn't e-mail me about the post where I said some decent things about him. How typical....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/04/2008 23:32 Comments ||
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The threat Mrs. Palin poses is why Mr. Obama's campaign has moved rapidly to disparage her record, and why left-wing bloggers have engaged in nonstop character smears against her and her family. Some in the press have aided and abetted this because they feel left out of the preannouncement vetting process. Poor babies!
The danger for Democrats is twofold: in highlighting Mrs. Palin's inexperience, they may focus attention on Mr. Obama's; Sarah's already there: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."
and the harsh attacks levied against Mrs. Palin could completely undermine the Obama promise of a "new politics." In the vice-presidential debate, Democrats must be concerned about Mr. Biden appearing bombastic and condescending -- which is almost a permanent state of mind for the Delaware senator -- while Mrs. Palin comes across as fresh, straight talking, nonpolitical and therefore appealing.
I'm imagining Biden covering a classic old Heart song:
So this aint the end -
I saw you again today
I had to turn my face away
Smiled like the sun -
Kisses for real
And tales - it never fails!
Our bloggers so low in the weeds
I bet you gonna ambush me
You'll have me down down down down on my knees
Now won't you, Sarah-cuda?
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 00:52 ||
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#1
Great Speech, I cried my eyelashes off...
I bet Biden is nervously pulling his hair plugs out...
#2
I was driving home tonight and listened to Sarah Palin's speech on the radio. People were waving and honking there horns all over Anchorage. They are energized and proud of their favorite daughter!
Sarah went on the offensive, and also gave a vision of the US that people could get energized about.
Now she and McCain need to hammer their vision all over the country and leave Obama bin Biden in the dust.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/04/2008 1:51 Comments ||
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#3
Who is this?
I served on library, hospital boards, and the city council before serving 2 terms in my state Senate. And then was a 1 term governor of a small state...and then was elected President?
JC...Possibly the worst President of the 20th century.
#5
Picture this Obama above it all.
Obamassiah looking down from heaven, admonishing all of his flesh eating piranha like followers to be civil and practice His new gospel politiquette.
Come all my little children, we are all my children.
Enough blood-letting for today against the rebellious [off michrophone, "till my angels warn of more poll slipage"].
#8
May be a form of a freudian slip, it's CNN so that is the best explanation. While BHO won nomination through acclamation and the roll-call was just a kabuki theater (kinda way-back machine to my old country, lol, and the Democrat party is now as democratic as German Democratic Republic), the McCains nomination was done democratically through actual voting and votes count.
#9
AP, is everyone in Alaska like her? 'Cause if so, I think I want to import my daughters in law from there.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 6:33 Comments ||
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#10
There was a stretch in her speech where she was pointing out a bunch of positions where O'Bambi had said one thing, then 'changed' his mind or position to something else. Did I miss something, or did she miss an opportunity to point out that alternative meaning of him being the 'candidate of change'?
#14
#9 Mike, no. Every female in AK is NOT like Sarah Palin. We have the full spectrum of people up here, but the main thing about AK is that this is big country--small town. There is a lot of opportunity here, and people like Sarah Palin can take advantage of it if they want and make a difference.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
09/04/2008 15:01 Comments ||
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#15
"JC...Possibly the worst President of the 20th century."
Everyone here is talking about Sarah Palin.
What is your point in bringing Jimmy Carter?
Posted by: Kelly ||
09/04/2008 19:47 Comments ||
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SARAH Palin is the most brilliant, bold, risky, dynamic-changing and consequential choice of vice-presidential running mate that John McCain could possibly have made. The reactions, pro and con, are incredible. Palin is now the most searched name on the internet. The Republicans raised more money online the day Palin was announced than ever before in this campaign.
The left-liberal media in the US are in a panic. And their loyal Australian imitators are regurgitating a stream of derivative anti-Americanism and cultural sneering entirely imitative of their big brothers at The New York Times.
The US political contest is thus poised at a delicate and fascinating moment. It's like the key seconds in a judo bout, to see who gets the better hold and executes the throw. The liberal establishment will try to blitzkrieg Palin into oblivion by charging that she is an extremist, a nut and corrupt. If the liberal elites fail in this, they risk mainstream America seeing their attacks on Palin as attacking the American heartland. Democrats should know from bitter experience that that kind of polarisation leads directly to Democratic defeat.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/04/2008 00:00 ||
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Palin takes battle to Democrats
John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, has made a stinging attack on Democratic presidential runner Barack Obama at the US Republican convention.
Defending her small town roots, she attacked Mr Obama as having talked of change but done nothing of substance.
Mrs Palin praised the "determination, resolve and sheer guts" of Mr McCain and said she was honoured to help him.
Mr McCain made a surprise appearance on stage, with her family, saying: "Don't you think we made the right choice?"
The Arizona senator is being nominated as the party's presidential candidate in a roll call vote of state delegates.
Mrs Palin gave her much-anticipated address to a packed and enthusiastic convention floor in St Paul.
In a sally directed at media commentators who have questioned her qualifications, she said she was "not going to Washington to seek their good opinion" but to serve the people.
Mrs Palin also attacked Mr Obama's "change agenda" and suggested he was more interested in idealism and "high-flown speech-making" than acting for "real Americans".
"In politics, there are some candidates who use change to promote their careers," she said.
"And then there are those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change."
#4
That was one of the best political speeches I've ever seen. My dad was in politics, so I've seen a lot of them. She damn near out-Reaganed Reagan.
She field-dressed Obama like a freshly-shot moose--but she did it so good-naturedly that she could've convinced him to volunteer for the disembowelment. It wasn't angry, it wasn't strident--but it was very, very deadly.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 0:28 Comments ||
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#5
Do the Dems/MSM even understand the ass-whipping they just received by her?
Posted by: Yosemite Sam ||
09/04/2008 0:43 Comments ||
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#8
Let them dig all they want to try to find out if her husband had an affair. There is no 'there' there. The donks made sure of that in defending Willy.
Mike M.
Leavin' it cuz I like it.
Posted by: Omains the Full Bosomed ||
09/04/2008 1:32 Comments ||
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She also poses the greatest threat yet to the Obama reform narrative. The cynical epic has become the establishment media bedtime story, with Obama as the young King Arthur riding forth to promise change. In this, the Washington Beltway media colony has been his eager Merlin, hoping to guide him, cleaving desperately to the theme that he's some kind of reformer, even though Obama is a politician backed by Chicago's Daley machine and never once challenged the political corruption in Chicago and Illinois. Not ever.
The contrast with Palinwho actually went after the Republican Party bosses in Alaska on the corruption issueis profound and challenging for the Obama-friendly media that willfully ignore his lack of leadership on the reform front, yet are consumed to find out if Palin has an overdue library book.
#10
Kass finishes with: Expect Palin to knock squirrels out of trees across Ohio and Pennsylvania, along with other critters, fur and feathered. Unlike other candidates, she'll probably do her own shooting and skinning, and maybe roast them on sticks, with a pinch of salt, demanding reporters eat some, so they can say it tastes like chicken.
St. Joan was a threat to the established order, and Palin is being positioned as a threat. Unfortunately, the French handed Joan over to the English, and she was burned. I don't think we know yet what happens to Sarah.
#11
Read the Chi Tribune's prime editorial on Sarah's speech. This is the prime paper in Obama's home base. HERE
Sounds like Obama is a skinned and stewed squirrel.
#14
Mmmmmm.....skinned and stewed squirrel....Brunswick style, I hope?
Posted by: no mo uro ||
09/04/2008 5:54 Comments ||
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#15
From Palin Faces a Cultural Crucible Carol Felsenthal, Chicago-based author of this year's "Clinton in Exile," points out that Palin is turning traditional ideological stances upside down another measure of the unprecedented nature of what the aspiring vice president represents.
"There's such a role reversal," Felsenthal says. "You have this conservative, pro-life Republican woman but it's the liberal Democrats who are saying, 'But who's going to take care of the children?' "
I suppose that's because many of them would've aborted their children to seek political office. It's just not fair that Sarah has both children and a career!
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/04/2008 6:46 Comments ||
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Not by me. I was enthused about her back in June. Now, can she avoid even one 'potatoe' moment? Because with the media unanimous in opposition, a single slip will be repeated every 30 minutes for the next two months, Goebbels-style (a lie, repeated often enough, becomes the truth.)
#18
"It's just not fair that Sarah has both children and a career!"
Yeah, Bobby, that's the essence of why she is so demolishing their foolish little world. They've spent 20-30 years being hangers-on, climbing the social and political ladders, positioning themselves for the big career move, and yet now that they have reached middle age, they have so little to make themselves self-satisfied. Here comes this woman, who's lead such a pedestrian existence and she has a lovely family, a loving mate (after 2 decades as she noted), and she has ascended to heights they have only been dreaming of. They see now that they have been cruelly deceived by Steinham and her like and they realize they can't go back and change things. They are so infuriated. At themselves.
#22
'Hawk, I used to be a building rep in the teachers' union when I was young and foolish. If you'd had to work for the superintendent we had, you'd've been a union member, too.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 13:48 Comments ||
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#23
Liberalhawk, I was a union member (local 2960, AFSCME). I remember some of the local leadership being ok, but the national organization was more concerned with telling me how to vote in national elections more than anything else.
BTW, what local did *you* belong to?
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
09/04/2008 18:45 Comments ||
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Of the 192 members of the United Nations, Pakistan's sovereign debt is now the riskiest. For the week ending Aug 29, Government of Pakistan bonds overtook Argentina's to be the most unsafe for investment.
In London, where Credit Default Swaps (CDS) are traded, the price for insuring $10 million worth of Argentina's debt stood at $788,000 while the price to insure the Government of Pakistan-guaranteed debt skyrocketed to $950,000 -- something that has never happened before -- Pakistan's debt is now the priciest to insure (read: the London market is contemplating a default-like scenario).
Pakistan's total foreign debt and liabilities have now crossed the $45 billion mark. 'Pakistan: Could the Political Chaos Lead to Sovereign Default?' a report by Citibank, asserts "if Pakistan opted to default, it would have to reschedule all of its debts, which amounts to $2.6 billion in self-issued bonds and $13.9 billion in bilateral debt". The report expects the "Pakistani rupee's fall to continue in light of government inaction and the break-up of the government coalition".
Pakistan is teetering on the brink of default. The rupee has lost some 20 per cent of its value over the past quarter and the KSE-100 Index is down a whopping 45 per cent. Pakistan cannot do without the IMF, the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Islamic Development Bank and another Saudi oil facility.
On the internal front, things are even more critical. By the end of August, inter-corporate circular debt had soared to a colossal Rs400 billion. The government owes oil marketing companies Rs84 billion on account of price differential claims (PDC).
The Pakistan Electric Power Company (Pepco) is owed Rs150 billion. The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) owe Pepco Rs75 billion. The Karachi Electric Supply Company (KESC) is holding back the payment of Rs56 billion. Several Independent Power Producers (IPPs) have threatened to encash the government guarantees.
Hubco (1,200 MW), Kapco (1,600 MW) and Uch (586 MW) are unable to produce electricity because of stuck payments with the government. Hubco and Uch, producing 1,786 MW, have put the government on a 30-day notice to pay their arrears of Rs66 billion or they would turn their plants off.
Pakistan is facing an acute solvency crisis. What happens after a country defaults on its debt obligations? Confidence, international as well as domestic, collapses, jobs are lost and economic activity takes a severe beating. And we have a part-time finance minister, an almost dummy prime minister and a highly controversial politician poised to become the president. Make your own calculations.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
Have these folks onsidered joining the NWFP Awakening? $300/month and all the falafel they can eat. Plus chicks dig the orange vest.
Posted by: ed ||
09/04/2008 23:47 Comments ||
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The rapid and unexpected decline of the Sunni insurgency in Iraq was officially recognized this week, when Maj. Gen. John Kelly, commanding the Marine Expeditionary Force, turned operational control of Anbar Province over to the Iraqi army and police.
Anbar, a vast expanse of desert the size of North Carolina, had been the stronghold of the Sunni insurgency. For years, foreign fighters loyal to al-Qaida had sneaked across Iraq's northwestern border with Syria, into Anbar and down a "rat line" of safe houses in Haditha, Ramadi and Hit.
From Fallujah, the arch terrorist Zarqawi dispatched suicide bombers to murder hundreds of Shiites in Baghdad. So fearsome were the al-Qaida leaders in Iraq that by 2005 they had taken control or intimidated Sunni resistance cells 10 times their size.
Through mid-2006, Anbar accounted for about 40% of American casualties and was the scene of the fiercest fighting in Iraq--the two battles for the city of Fallujah and two years of street fighting in Ramadi, the provincial capital.
In 2006, Marine reports acknowledged that al-Qaida controlled the million Sunnis in Anbar, while in Baghdad, to the east, other al-Qaida gangs and Shiite death squads were fighting in every neighborhood. In short, the U.S. was losing. It was believed that Anbar would be the last province to be pacified, if it ever was.
That conventional wisdom overlooked the anger toward al-Qaida stirring among the Sunni tribes that had had their women seized in marriages of convenience, their smuggling rings forced to pay tribute and their sheiks killed whenever they objected. A remarkable mid-level sheik named Abu Risa Sattar called together some tribesmen and declared a "Sunni Awakening"--the tribes would come over to the American side and drive out al-Qaida.
The reason al-Qaida had survived for so long in proximity to the Marine grunts in Anbar was that its members had posed as civilians. The war would have been over in a week if al-Qaida and other insurgent groups wore uniforms.
Once the tribes pointed out who was associated with al-Qaida, the war turned with astonishing swiftness in Anbar. One sheik posted over a hundred names inside a mosque, demanding that those named publicly renounce al-Qaida. Inside a week, most had done so, while the bodies of others showed up on back streets.
The strategy in Anbar, that of American partnerships with tribes on a local level, was eventually replicated in the capital. Al-Qaida had fled from Anbar before Gen. David Petraeus took command in Baghdad in February 2007.
Petraeus then ordered the American soldiers in and around the capital to leave their large bases and live in outposts in the neighborhoods among the people, with daily foot patrols similar to those conducted by the Marines in Anbar.
As the spirit of the Awakening swept out of Anbar, Petraeus encouraged his battalion commanders to hire Sunni neighborhood watch groups. Eventually called Sons of Iraq, these groups also turned against al-Qaida. In essence, the Sunni resistance that had fought the Americans morphed into the Sons of Iraq.
In turn, the Americans have insisted that at least a portion of Sons of Iraq be allowed to join the police or the army, and that Sunni provinces like Anbar receive a fair share of oil revenues.
Anbar is exclusively Sunni, far removed in distance and intrigue from Baghdad. Prime Minister Maliki acceded to Marine pressure and allowed the Sons of Iraq to be integrated into the security forces. On the political front, the Awakening movement in Anbar is confident its candidates will sweep out of office its Sunni opposition, the unpopular Iraqi Islamic Party.
As Anbar becomes a distinct symbol of progress, the U.S. Marines are pulling back. They are no longer needed militarily. As Marines, they want to move on to Afghanistan, because that's where the fight is. Overall, military progress in Iraq has been remarkable.
The problem is on the political front. Maliki and many in the Shiite-controlled ministries are deeply resentful and distrustful of the Sunnis. Sons of Iraq were accepted into the security forces in Anbar because the province is completely Sunni and isolated from Baghdad.
In other provinces and in Baghdad, the Maliki government has rebuffed American entreaties to accept the Sons of Iraq into the security forces. The test of the government is whether it will reach reasonable agreement with the Sunnis.
Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine, has made 15 trips to Iraq. His new book, The Strongest Tribe: War, Politics and the Endgame in Iraq, has just been released by Random House.
#1
REALLY!!! Now we know that Juan Cole was right when he claimed that the US negotiated directly with al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, during the talks with Sunnis in Amman, Jordan. Now, the US pays the same people who carried out 9-11, $300 each per month to (former) terrorists. And Bush's best case SOFA arrangement, sees the US leave (and Iran march in) Iraq in 2011.
I thought monarchial rule ended in 1776. King George the Fourth, by divine right, might disagree. Okay, Bush never made a mistake.
As National Review's in-house demography bore, I've been struck this last week by the left's fierce hostility to Sarah Palin's fecundity. One gentleman - well, okay, maybe not a "gentleman" but certainly an impeccably sensitive progressive new male - wrote to me from Shelton, Washington:
This abortion prohibitionist hag won't cut it among women with brains.
And BTW she is a good example of reproduction run amok. 5 kids; 1 retard. I wonder if the bitch ever heard of getting spayed.
Each to her own, Mister Sensitive. You can be a 44-year old mother of five expecting her first grandchild and serving as Governor of Alaska. Or you can be, like Martha Stewart's daughter Alexis, a 43-year old single "career woman" hosting a satellite radio show and spending $28,000 a month on "intracytoplasmic sperm injection" in hopes of becoming pregnant. Every woman has the "right to choose" her own path through life, but it's a lazy assumption to take for granted that most Americans find Sarah Palin's choices as freakish as our metropolitan elites do.
What was it the feminists used to say? "You can have it all." Sarah Palin is a mom, and the first female governor of her state. But the enforcers at the National Organization of Women dismiss her as "more a conservative man than she is a woman".
Golly. These days, NOW seems to have as narrow and proscriptive a view of what women are permitted to be as any old 1950s sitcom dad.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 14:24 ||
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#1
NOW, the folks that thought Bill Clinton was just a "naughty boy"...
#3
As has been said before, the problem with the feminist movement is that they've already won all of their reasonable demands; that leaves them with only loopy demands.
#4
As has been said before, the problem with the feminist movement is that they've already won all of their reasonable demands; that leaves them with only loopy demands.
This goes for practically all the civil rights issues of the '60s. When you've achieved all your goals, you can either find another line of work, or you can find new grievances.
#5
Civil rights movement has not achieved all of its goals: it merely lessened discrimination by the goverment. Societal discrimination is another matter and it is still persists and will so for hundreds of years to come. Example? Segregated neighbourhoods will take care of it. Any solution to the problem? not really.
Posted by: General Comment ||
09/04/2008 23:00 Comments ||
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Should a mother with five children, one of them a pregnant teen and another an infant with special needs, be running for vice president?
The question is being much debated, in newspaper stories and columns, on blogs and Web sites, and, yes, around kitchen tables across the country.
No would be asking these questions if she were a man. No one asked whether Arnold Schwarzenegger should run for governor because he has four children. They looked at Maria, his wonderful wife, and said, what a beautiful family.
A mother doesnt get the same treatment. This is how the double standard works. . . .
I have no doubt that Barack Obama can count on his fingers the number of times he has been home in the last 19 months to put his two beautiful daughters to bed. In interviews, he says as much, expressing his gratitude to his mother-in-law, who has taken over many parenting responsibilities during the campaign, given that his wife has been away a great deal of the time as well, making appearances and raising money. Does this make him a bad father"? Should it undercut his claim to the presidency? Of course not.
Why should Sarah Palin be different? . . . She is the governor of Alaska. She may be qualified, or she may not be. Being a mother certainly teaches you things -- I think it has taught me a great deal, frankly -- but it is not why anyone should vote for her.
If she thinks she can do it, if her husband and children support the decision, as they seem to, who are we to say otherwise? She deserves what every father running for office automatically gets: a chance to be judged fairly, based on experience and ideology, qualifications and competence, not our second-hand judgments of her most private decisions.
Here's the punchline: Susan Estrich is the Robert Kingsley Professor of Law and Political Science at the University of Southern California. She was Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the first female president of the Harvard Law Review. She is a columnist for Creators Syndicate and has written for USA Today and the Los Angeles Times.
Estrich's books include the just published "Soulless," "The Case for Hillary Clinton," "How to Get Into Law School," "Sex & Power," "Real Rape," "Getting Away with Murder: How Politics Is Destroying the Criminal Justice System" and "Making the Case for Yourself: A Diet Book for Smart Women."
She served as campaign manager for Michael Dukakis' presidential bid, becoming the first woman to head a U.S. presidential campaign. Estrich appears regularly on the FOX News Channel, in addition to writing the "Blue Streak" column for FOXNews.com. In other words, Susan Estrich is as lefty and feminist as they get--and, to her credit, she thinks the Palin-bashing by her team is over the top and isn't afraid to say so.
You go, girl! Both of you! (Sarah P. and Susan E.)
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 09:23 ||
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Susan Estrich has kids? Huh. I guess I mis-took her.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
09/04/2008 16:42 Comments ||
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#2
My first impressions of her came during the 2004 election night coverage, when she showed up on Fox with her face "freshly pressed", saying she had it on "very, very, very good sources that Kerry was pulling away" in her 3 pack a day, old broad down the end of the bar persona.
Since then I have listened to her, found out how accomplished she was, and I gave her a second listen to, and I find that she still sounds the same, but she is sharp and I look up when she is on TV.
On behalf of me, my accomplished wife and my 2 young adult daughters, I appreciate what she says here, and couldn't agree with her more.
THE UGLINESS of this presidential election has come to the forefront with the selection of Governor Palin as John McCain's running mate. It's time we get out in the open what is really happening here. Coverage of Palin has two underlying assumptions: She's a hick and she's stupid.
Experience is the buzzword in this election. We have a new dialogue: How experienced is Senator Obama compared to Governor Palin? Through intellectual gymnastics, surrogates explain how Obama has the upper hand. But they mean something more invidious. He is smart and she is stupid. He is Harvard, she is University of Idaho. It may not square well with Obama's populism, but that is the narrative: Vote Ivy.
It's obvious the media don't just dislike Palin's positions, they dislike her. They don't approve of her life story, her hobbies, or her religion. The coverage reflects this bias. Obama's narrative of an Ivy League-educated, globalized citizen is familiar, while Palin's small-town roots are foreign. From "Borat" to "The Daily Show," middle America has become the punch line of many jokes. The hick narrative being promulgated is just the latest manifestation of elite America's new hobby: widespread cultural condescension.
Posted by: Mike ||
09/04/2008 09:15 ||
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#1
These are just mean-spirited people who have the power of the left behind them. They are the same people who made fun of nerds and fat people in high school to get laughs. If you aren't fun or funny, you can still get attention by being mean. It's how they make themselves feel important.
#2
How experienced is Senator Obama compared to Governor Palin? Through intellectual gymnastics, surrogates explain how Obama has the upper hand. But they mean something more invidious. He is smart and she is stupid. He is Harvard, she is University of Idaho
Theyre both kinda short on the resume compared to most recent past US presidents and Veeps. SO weve got a short term Senator who was mainly running for Prez that time, vs a short term gov of a small (in population, budget, etc) state (and yeah, state size mattered to the GOP when it was Bill Clinton running) whos got like one big achievement on energy. And before that youve got Obamas years in the Illinois legilature vs Palin as Mayor of a town of 6500 (its wonderful to LIVE in a town of 6500, just that the challenges of being mayor of it arent exactly in the Giuliani level of challenge)
But it seems that folks would rather have a Kulturkampf war about small towns vs big citys, state universities vs ivy league (some irony here, eh, for the small govt types) Pentecostals vs UCC.
#3
Obama is running for President. Palin for VP. BIG difference in required experience levels and even judgement. The buck stops at the presidency. VPs stop at state funerals.
Posted by: ed ||
09/04/2008 11:54 Comments ||
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#4
Obama is running for President. Palin for VP. BIG difference in required experience levels and even judgement. The buck stops at the presidency. VPs stop at state funerals.
Gerald Ford, LBJ, Harry Truman, Calvin Coolidge, and Teddy Roosevelt say "hi"
#5
I'll admit Palin's administrative credentials aren't so great but neither are McCain, Biden or Obama's.
and even if you ignore the whole involvement with Ayers, Obama's administrative role on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge where they spent $100M to $150M on some few hundred schools, training sessions, cultural promotions and the like and essentially achieve nothing for the kids (although the subgrantees were happy) is simply horrific.
#6
And after that is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Nice try but no cigar for you.
The VP is a training ground for the presidency. Always has been. The most important qualification for a VP is character itself. If elected, she will have 4-8 years of hands on training for both national and international leadership. Voting present, or missing voting altogether, for 4 years in the Senate is not preparation for the presidency.
Posted by: ed ||
09/04/2008 12:09 Comments ||
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#7
LH: I understand your point. However, if Barack Obama had named (for example) Kathleen Sibelius, governor of Kansas, to be his VP nominee, the media wouldn't have raised the issues of being a mom, being a woman, being from the heartland, lack of foreign policy experience, lack of travel abroad, etc.
You see, Gov. Sibelius is one of them.
And Sarah Palin isn't.
That's the difference.
Posted by: Steve White ||
09/04/2008 12:07 Comments ||
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#8
she will have 4-8 years of hands on training for both national and international leadership
I'll give her 4-6 months and she can take the training wheels off. Maybe less.
#9
Gerald Ford, LBJ, Harry Truman, Calvin Coolidge, and Teddy Roosevelt say "hi"
Well, that's true, LH, but they were all after a practice period as Veep. And Roosevelt was a short-term Governor, and a really short-term Veep, and I like his work.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/04/2008 13:36 Comments ||
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#10
I'll admit Palin's administrative credentials aren't so great but neither are McCain, Biden or Obama's.
McCain and Biden have both have extensive experience in the Senate, voting, committee work, writing legislation. Admin exp is good per se, but a couple of years in a small state doesnt really trump decades in the Senate, esp when known as smart and effective senators, which AFAICT BOTH McCain and Biden are. Wrt the chosen one, no comment.
#9. The point is, theres no guarantee a presidential death is going to take a couple of years. a sudden illness or assasins bullet could take the president in Jan 2009.
As for TR, he had pretty extensive exp before becoming Gov of NY. He was mayor of NYC, again a rather bigger administrative challenge than being mayor of Wasilla. (hat tip to Giuliani) and before that he was an active reforming member of the NY state legislator (hat tip to Obama) And far from being an outsider to DC, hed served on the federal Civil Service Commission. hes also been on the board running the NYC police, at a time when reforming said org was a huge issue. I mean really talking about TR and SP in one breath is a bit silly.
SW- I didnt pay much attention to Sibelius. I didnt much care for her myself. And I havent seen anyone attack Palin for being a woman, or a mom, or being from the heartland. And I sure bet everyone but the solid pro-obama pundits would have come down on her for lack of for policy experience. I think that was precisely why neither she nor Tim Kaine were chosen.
#11
oh, and i really shouldnt say this, but TR attended Harvard, which gave him a certain breadth of outlook, aside from the broad perspective his elite social class gave him - foreign travel, family connections in the South as well is in the Yankee elite, etc, etc.
Compare that to someone very bright from a narrower small town upbringing, like say, Jimmy Carter.
Its just mind boggling that going to a more selective university, having a broader outlook, are looked upon as DISqualifications. And before someone mentions Harry Truman, lets remember how much time he spent in Washington as a prominent Senator. Oh, and how despite being FROM a small town, he was deeply wrapped up in big city politics. There was a time when the GOP talked as much about Truman, and Kansas City's Prendergast machines, as they do now about Dick Dailey and Resko.
#12
"I havent seen anyone attack Palin for being a woman, or a mom, or being from the heartland."
Been asleep the past few days, LH?
And no, I'm not going to bother finding links for you.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/04/2008 15:40 Comments ||
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#13
Exactly, Barbara. Just compare and contrast the covers of Us Weekly for the issues devoted to Obama and Palin.
Oh yeah - and Alaska ain't exactly the heartland. More like the frontier. I know that Governor Palin was born in Idaho, but her parents moved her to Alaska when she was a baby.
Posted by: Rambler in California ||
09/04/2008 16:38 Comments ||
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#14
Palin is closer to Truman than the others listed. Small town background. Limited educational preparation for elite position. Similar reputation for forthrightness. He had a couple of terms in the Senate vs her short tenure as a governor. He had some legal and military 'executive' experience. Both had private business experience. She has the unique (so far) and not insignificant experience of motherhood. He became president suddenly and early. Overall preparation edge goes to Truman, but not by a lot. And though he was an unpopular president I think he did a pretty good job.
#15
I heard one woman say I watched Palin and saw myself. The donks are having trouble with the fact that a lot of people identify with Palin. She seems like just a regular person that has values of mainstream America.
Posted by: Joe L. ||
09/04/2008 16:54 Comments ||
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#16
Its just mind boggling that going to a more selective university, having a broader outlook, are looked upon as DISqualifications.
The team known as "Kennedy's Best and Brightest" nod in agreement from the Early Vietnam History wing...
#17
Liberal Hawk,
TR is actually closer to GW Bush is the sense that, yes he did have the elite social upbringing and education. However, his time out West caused him to reject much of his earlier upbringing and embrace the values of the "Common Man".
Back east, he was a sickly house bound kid. When he returned he was a healthy athletic outdoorsman.
As for Sarah Palin, being small town just means she has not absorbed alot of the self loathing pathologies of the bi-coastal elites.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
09/04/2008 18:10 Comments ||
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#18
Univ. of Idaho, nice school out in the farmlands, pea and lental capitol of the world. Great place to send your kids for an education, safe, and it is the heartland. Mascot is a Vandal, how fitting. I would not trade even a second of my time there for a Harvard degree.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
09/04/2008 19:09 Comments ||
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#19
Liberalhawk - Harvard and Yale are at the bottom core of half the problems in this country.
Some of us actively wish those two Universities ill.
#21
"Broader" perspective...
Is it derived from da word broad, LH? ;-)
Geebus. That may have been somewhat valid half a century ago, but now these institutios became little more than leftist indoctrination centers (xcept hard sci--and even there it goes in that direction in some faculties).
I would say that people that self-study have a much broader and deeper insight into things, these days.
Another Chicago tribune editorial, this writer clearly not impressed by Palin; more fearful.
Are Alaskans violating God's will if they disagree with Gov. Sarah Palin's energy policy? Critics charge the Republicans' presumptive vice presidential nominee recently delivered some troubling remarks in the pulpit of her childhood church.
The Washington D.C.-based Interfaith Alliance criticized Palin for using religious rhetoric to divide. Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, said he found her words particularly troubling when combined with her advocacy for teaching intelligent design in public schools and her approval of a Christian Heritage Week Proclamation.
Speaking to school of ministry graduates gathered at Wasilla Assembly of God on June 8, Palin asked the crowd to pray for the corporate cooperation necessary to build a $30 billion natural gas pipeline across Alaska. But she added that the work she does to secure the pipeline, build schools, and provide guns and squad cars for state troopers doesnt matter if the "people of Alaskas heart isnt right with God."
She also said American soldiers have been sent to Iraq "on a task that is from God."
"This is the same kind of divisive theocratic rhetoric that President Bush has employed for eight years," Gaddy said. "Gov. Palin is suggesting that people of faith must agree with her energy policy or they risk incurring Gods wrath. Sorry, I was not able to discern that from the words quoted.
Good and faithful people hold differing points of view in this the most religiously diverse nation in the world."
Gaddy also criticized controversial sermons preached by the current pastor of Wasilla Assembly of God, Rev. Ed Kalnins, who has said critics of President Bush will be banished to hell, and supporters of Sen. John Kerry may not be able to get into heaven.
See his statement following Palin's selection here. The church has taken down its Web site.
What do you think? Are Palin and her pastor's remarks cause for concern? For the Dems? Yewbetchya. Is this the best y'all can do? Many, but not all, of the comments at the link represent views supporting the writer.
Posted by: Bobby ||
09/04/2008 06:15 ||
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#1
The Dems are desperately searching for a strategy to neutralize her as quickly as possible. The approach being tested here is to portray her as "kook-fringe". Note the absurdly far-fetched language - "divisive theocratic rhetoric". In left-speak 'theocratic' means any mention of God by an elected official, even if it's inside a church. Because obviously the threat of theocracy is just around the corner.
#2
Meanwhile, the ghost of Rev. Wright is struggling to get out from under Obama's bus.....
Posted by: Swamp Blondie in the Cornfields ||
09/04/2008 8:50 Comments ||
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#3
I don't agree with Palin but I don't like how CNN (this morning) and Nytimes (last night) keep showing Palin holding up her hand like a damn Nazi on the main page, same with guilianni. They only held their hands up for a hot second. Visual propaganda.
#4
Good idea Swamp Blondie. Crawl under the Big O bus and drag that guy out to daylight and let him pontify about Palins 'misuse of religion". Should quiet this line of attack down quickly.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
09/04/2008 9:22 Comments ||
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#5
Obama was invoking God over and over and over again on his campaign trail, yet not once did the left even squeak about it.
#6
Holy Shit! I can't believe any news network could stoop that low. Not even the Commie News Network, that is until now.
Posted by: ed ||
09/04/2008 9:46 Comments ||
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#7
Glerelet Munster7800
I agree with you that this is what they are trying to do. However it won't work. People in this country are so inurred to this kind of propagandizing that it just rolls right off.
The only people that would even notice this are the Hollywood types thinking about what great "imaging" it is.
Real people just don't pay close enough attention or look for hidden nuances in mundane gestures.
Does show the depths to which the left will sink (Cripes at this rate the Marianna's trench will fill up and break the surface by November)
The echo chamber can hear nothing but their own narrative.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/04/2008 11:20 Comments ||
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#10
GM7800, if that is the game then perhaps that picture of bo standing outside a tribute, tribute, to war specifically placed by mr hitler himself to inspire awe and presence in Berlin, with the ol salute is more, how is it characterized, visually powerful?
#11
...keep showing Palin holding up her hand like a damn Nazi
Incorrect! The hand is not extended fully straight, but curved slightly upward (25 points off). The arm is oustreached too far to the right (30 points off). Eye focus appears to be slightly to the left (5 points off). Total score for the hated nazi salute, a dismal and failing 40%. But that's the bloodly only thing she came up short on last evening.
#12
That's right, Fred. I'm sure they're patting themselves on the back right now for being so clever, but the symbolism is lost on most people and the rest don't buy it.
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Sarah Joan of Arc isn't as catchy as Sarah Barracuda, yet even so, the throng called for her to lead them, an unknown from the edge of nowhere, a woman with no experience in the great city of light.
Twenty years after Ronald Reagan left office, Republicans who have long missed him may have found a future Margaret Thatcher. If John McCain wins, conservatives may find one of the most enduring accomplishments of his term will have been what he did before it started: helping to fill the Republican Party's future talent bench with such a fresh and compelling figure.
SARAH Palin is the most brilliant, bold, risky, dynamic-changing and consequential choice of vice-presidential running mate that John McCain could possibly have made. The reactions, pro and con, are incredible. Palin is now the most searched name on the internet. The Republicans raised more money online the day Palin was announced than ever before in this campaign.
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