It's Sarah Palin

PEPPER wrote:

These "unborn children" are fucking living beings and your presidential candidate is all for killing them because the "parent" does not want them...sadly I once believed like you that abortion was OK and it wasn’t my choice to decide for a person what to do...but after seeing a child develop right in front of me I just cannot justify that reasoning anymore...and hopefully when your chance comes to become a parent you will see this also. Abortion is murder and is no different then someone killing another human being for money.

Ok, so it is republicans fault you raise your baby in a ghetto....shitty public school system you believe is the result of the federal government...then you voluntarily sign up to join the army and get sent to fight a war......I am with you on the vet benefits but the rest of your arguments are pretty off base.

Ghetto living and shitty public schools are a result of your local government not the feds....Bush can't be blamed for those and if you can convince me otherwise have at it

Which is it, have I not had my chance to be a parent, or am I raising my baby in the ghetto?
All kidding aside, I am the grandfather of two beautiful children, ages 3 and 7, and my daughter and her husband are raising them in the same little seaside town in Connecticut that my wife and I live in. We are basically their day care providers so I see them almost every day and also have seen them develop. I do not believe that a child is a child until it is viable out of the womb. A women should be able to choose up until then whether or not she can take care of it. What about cases of rape, incest, or when the mother's life is in danger. Should a woman, or girl as in many cases, be forced to bring that child into the world, as the Neocons and the Evangelicals and the Sarah Palin's think. Just because she chose to have a baby with Down Syndrome does not be that others are prepared to do so.
To say that our education system is the responsibility of local government is just naive. Local governments cannot afford to run a school system without at least 60 percent of it coming from the state and federal level. The only Republican answer to this is to give the well-to-do vouchers to send their kids to private schools and siphon off even more of this money. No Child Left Behind? No Child, millions of children left behind by Bush, Cheney, Mccain, and Palin.
Oh yes, and ghetto's and sub-standard housing are the fault of the people living there, right? The Feds have nothing to do with that, either. I grew up in a town where the Feds, under the guise of the city, came in and tore down an entire neighborhood and gave it to a pharmaceutical company. They did it under the guise of 'Eminent Domain', and the Supreme Court, who put Bush in office in the first place, allowed it to happen. The Federal Government has their hand in everything.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/greg-mitchell/2-top-alaska-newspapers-q_b_122625.html

Since yesterday's shocking arrival of Gov. Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate there has been the usual cable news and print blathering about the pick from those who know little about her. But what about the journalists close to home -- in Alaska -- who know her best and have followed her career for years?

For the past 24 hours, the pages and web sites of the two leading papers up there have raised all sorts of issues surrounding Palin, from her ethics problems to general lack of readiness for this big step up. Right now the top story on the Anchorage Daily News web site looks at new info in what it calls "troopergate" and opens: "Alaska's former commissioner of public safety says Gov. Sarah Palin, John McCain's pick to be vice president, personally talked him on two occasions about a state trooper who was locked in a bitter custody battle with the governor's sister.

"In a phone conversation Friday night, Walt Monegan, who was Alaska's top cop until Palin fired him July 11, told the Daily News that the governor also had e-mailed him two or three times about her ex-brother-in-law, Trooper Mike Wooten, though the e-mails didn't mention Wooten by name. Monegan claims his refusal to fire Wooten was a major reason that Palin dismissed him. Wooten had been suspended for five days previously, based largely on complaints that Palin's family had initiated before Palin was governor."

A reporter for the Anchorage daily, Gregg Erickson, even did an online chat with the Washington Post, in which he revealed that Palin's approval rating in the state was not the much-touted 80%, but 65% and sinking -- and that among journalists who followed her it might be in the "teens." He added: "I have a hard time seeing how her qualifications stack up against the duties and responsibilities of being president.... I expect her to stick with simple truths. When asked about continued American troop presence in Iraq, she said she knows only one thing about that (I paraphrase): no one has attacked the American homeland since George Bush took the war to Iraq."

His paper found a number of leading Republican officeholders in the state who mocked Palin's qualifications. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Lyda Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

Here are excerpts from the editorials in the two leading papers.


From the Daily News-Miner in Fairbanks:

Sen. John McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate was a stunning decision that should make Alaskans proud, even while we wonder about the actual merits of the choice.... Alaskans and Americans must ask, though, whether she should become vice president and, more importantly, be placed first in line to become president.
In fact, as the governor herself acknowledged in her acceptance speech, she never set out to be involved in public affairs. She has never publicly demonstrated the kind of interest, much less expertise, in federal issues and foreign affairs that should mark a candidate for the second-highest office in the land. Republicans rightfully have criticized the Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, for his lack of experience, but Palin is a neophyte in comparison; how will Republicans reconcile the criticism of Obama with the obligatory cheering for Palin?

Most people would acknowledge that, regardless of her charm and good intentions, Palin is not ready for the top job. McCain seems to have put his political interests ahead of the nation's when he created the possibility that she might fill it.


And from the Anchorage Daily News:

It's stunning that someone with so little national and international experience might be heartbeat away from the presidency.
Gov. Palin is a classic Alaska story. She is an example of the opportunity our state offers to those with talent, initiative and determination...

McCain picked Palin despite a recent blemish on her ethically pure resume. While she was governor, members of her family and staff tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the Alaska State Troopers. Her public safety commissioner would not do so; she forced him out, supposedly for other reasons. While she runs for vice-president, the Legislature has an investigator on the case.

For all those advantages, Palin joins the ticket with one huge weakness: She's a total beginner on national and international issues.

Gov. Palin will have to spend the next two months convincing Americans that she's ready to be a heartbeat away from the presidency....

pateljam wrote:

This is a little off topic, but what happens to a downs child after mom and dad die... does the child get stuck is some state home and tax payers foot the bill... don't mean to stir the shit up... I am really just wondering....

It is a sad topic, but progress has been made and the life expectancy of someone with downs syndrome is now between 50 and 55 years of age. That is significantly longer than when I was young and knew of downs syndrome kids only living into their 20's. So if the child lives to 55 and the parents had the child in their 20's to 30's, they will likely die around the time their child dies. It used to be that the child's death would almost always precede the parents' death.

whitepants wrote:

Looks like McCain is going for Hillary's girls! Smart move.

Sarah being a women is irrelevant. No right wing Hillary women to get.

"Alaska, where you can't be too fat or too drunk, and no one ask to see your high school equivilancy exams" - Homer Simpson

PEPPER wrote:

These "unborn children" are fucking living beings and your presidential candidate is all for killing them because the "parent" does not want them...sadly I once believed like you that abortion was OK and it wasn’t my choice to decide for a person what to do...but after seeing a child develop right in front of me I just cannot justify that reasoning anymore...and hopefully when your chance comes to become a parent you will see this also. Abortion is murder and is no different then someone killing another human being for money.

Ok, so it is republicans fault you raise your baby in a ghetto....shitty public school system you believe is the result of the federal government...then you voluntarily sign up to join the army and get sent to fight a war......I am with you on the vet benefits but the rest of your arguments are pretty off base.

Ghetto living and shitty public schools are a result of your local government not the feds....Bush can't be blamed for those and if you can convince me otherwise have at it

And 90% plus in the Ghetto's/Inner City have voted for Dems (Mayors etc)for years and things have gotten worse. At some point one would think maybe what is going on here is not working. Must be nice to have sheep in the flock that will vote for you no matter how bad things are.

digster wrote:

I think it was Lewis Black that described it best for me; "The Democrats are the party of no ideas. The Republicans are the party of bad ideas."

That reminds me of a good G.K. Chesterton quote:

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected."

While we're talking about community organizing in the last post, I found this nugget from Senator McCain's interview on Fox News Sunday:

"MCCAIN: Well, by the way, also she was a member of the PTA. I think it's wonderful. But the point is she has been to Kuwait. She has been over there. She has been with her troops, the National Guard that she commands, who had been over there and had the experience. I'm proud of her knowledge of these challenges and issues.

And of course, as governor she has had enormous responsibilities, none of which Senator Obama had. He -- when she was in government, he was a community organizer."

Although this is wrong by the way (Obama was a community organizer before Palin ever entered government. He became State Senator in Illinois and she joined the City Council of her town at the same time), I found it pretty baffling that a presidential candidate belittles a profession such as community organizer. Imagine the patented McCain scoffing grin when saying it and you can get a pretty clear image.

The profession of community organizing is one of the most important jobs in this country. They organize voter registration, mobilize residents to confront and make demands of their elected officials. It is a difficult, grueling job with little dazzle and many setbacks. My best friend currently works as a community organizer, working for ten hours a day sometimes 6 days a week for 20 grand a year. But he is doing great work in the community where he works; they just got the City Council to agree to deliver funds to establish an after-school center so kids in the neighborhood could have an alternative to the street. Countless people in this country have improved lives due to these people. And McCain belittles them? What the fuck is his problem?

I mean, I see it when I watch Sean Hannity, or hear Limbaugh, or O'Reilly. They say Obama was a "community organizer" with a snort, and they are stupid enough to think it is an insult. Fine, they're newscasters; stupidity comes with the profession. But I didn't like finding out that McCain is also stupid enough to think the same thing.

Rant over, whew.

Sarah Palin's daughter is pregnant.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26496189/

The Republicans are turning this election into a soap opera.