Tsunami John (McCain's pick for VP)

[Mammon]

It appears George Reisman has gone off half-cocked. Gov. Palin ain't no socialist.

It appears you ignored the facts and smeared one of the greatest Objectivist thinkers we have. Your point results in nothing more then a "Nuh-uh!"

Reisman needs to do better than this if he is going to blogging about current events. I would like to know what he has to say about a state gov't owning mineral rights, but characterizing Gov. Palin as a looter equivalent to Obama is just lazy.

Why can't you accept that a Republican did something wrong and anti-capitalist? Reisman's views on current events are worth more, to me, then yours are. Too call it lazy is, in my opinion -- very ignorant.

[Grames]

It appears you ignored the facts and smeared one of the greatest Objectivist thinkers we have. Your point results in nothing more then a "Nuh-uh!"

Why can't you accept that a Republican did something wrong and anti-capitalist? Reisman's views on current events are worth more, to me, then yours are. Too call it lazy is, in my opinion -- very ignorant.

Reisman needs to make the point that a severance tax is socialist. Is that clear enough for you?

[agrippa1]

Yes. A ward heeler worth two cents would have Obama at least 10 points ahead of McCain, not barely keeping up.

I agree with everything else you write here. A ward heeler can dress a party stooge and teach him how to use a teleprompter, but he can't make Americans like him. Chicagoans, maybe, but not Americans at large. Obama is the best the Democrats have. He's a good-looking, sincere-sounding, teloquent young face, something the Dems are desperately lacking, but upon which they have based their only arguably successful administrations in the past half century. He is the blank screen upon which someone is projecting an image they think can get them a grasp on the reins. Obama may have received a $300k gift from an Iraqi businessman with ties to oil-for-food, and illegal arms to Hussein (the connections have been made, the press refuses to dig). He's shot to fame in an election in which nefarious back roomers like Soros have cast a larger shadow on the Left, and at the same time he's eschewed his public funding promise. Wouldn't take much of a skim or very heavy laundry load to channel a nice sum from one of his benefactors.

Corruption is the issue this election. zerObama's a question mark. McCain has at least a history of trying (though his campaign reform is an assault on 1st Amendment), and Palin appears to be a fearless foe of corruption. As this campaign progresses, I believe you will see the caricature of zerObama as the blank being drawn more clearly, with the ever present question: Who's the projector?

[D'kian]

I agree with everything else you write here. A ward heeler can dress a party stooge and teach him how to use a teleprompter, but he can't make Americans like him. Chicagoans, maybe, but not Americans at large.

There's the media. Were Obama white, or Republican, or not as well-liked by the media, he'd have been crucified about three times over by my count. You say so yourself in your post. Not only has the media overlooked, let's see, the Wright sermons, the Ayers patronage, the shady donations, and other things, but the myriad gaffes the Chosen One has indulged in (Remember Dan Quayle was tagged an idiot for one gaffe; not that he dind't commit others later on).

As this campaign progresses, I believe you will see the caricature of zerObama as the blank being drawn more clearly, with the ever present question: Who's the projector?

I don't think there's one. Sure, Obama has received a lot fo support from people like Soros, from the netroots, from the media, etc. But such support is either self-motivated or arrived at by persuasion. And he's running for his own reasons, too. If you're asking who's running the grand conspiracy to put Obama in the White House, I ahve to answer there's no conspiracy. At least not a secret cabal manipulating perceptions and events; indeed there is a concerted effort, but it's all mostly out in the open.

BTW the 80s saw the Reagan Democrats, this decade the 9/11 Democrats, both are long-standing Democrats who found reasons to vote for GOP candidates in preference to their own party's. This election we may have Clinton Democrats voting fro McCain for two reasons: 1) they're against Obama, 2) they like Sara Palin (they can tell she's female, that is).

Now, for 2012, how would a Clinton vs Palin election campaign look like?

[dadmonson]

Now, for 2012, how would a Clinton vs Palin election campaign look like?

Like a bunch of balogny.

Also Palin needs to tell her speech writer to get their facts straight. Here is an article here... http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080904/ap_on_.../cvn_fact_check

Some examples:

PALIN: "I have protected the taxpayers by vetoing wasteful spending ... and championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. I told the Congress 'thanks but no thanks' for that Bridge to Nowhere."

THE FACTS: As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a lobbyist and traveled to Washington annually to support earmarks for the town totaling $27 million. In her two years as governor, Alaska has requested nearly $750 million in special federal spending, by far the largest per-capita request in the nation. While Palin notes she rejected plans to build a $398 million bridge from Ketchikan to an island with 50 residents and an airport, that opposition came only after the plan was ridiculed nationally as a "bridge to nowhere."

PALIN: "There is much to like and admire about our opponent. But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform — not even in the state senate."

THE FACTS: Compared to McCain and his two decades in the Senate, Obama does have a more meager record. But he has worked with Republicans to pass legislation that expanded efforts to intercept illegal shipments of weapons of mass destruction and to help destroy conventional weapons stockpiles. The legislation became law last year. To demean that accomplishment would be to also demean the work of Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a respected foreign policy voice in the Senate. In Illinois, he was the leader on two big, contentious measures in Illinois: studying racial profiling by police and requiring recordings of interrogations in potential death penalty cases. He also successfully co-sponsored major ethics reform legislation.

PALIN: "The Democratic nominee for president supports plans to raise income taxes, raise payroll taxes, raise investment income taxes, raise the death tax, raise business taxes, and increase the tax burden on the American people by hundreds of billions of dollars."

THE FACTS: The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that Obama's plan would increase after-tax income for middle-income taxpayers by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. McCain's plan, which cuts taxes across all income levels, would raise after tax-income for middle-income taxpayers by 3 percent, the center concluded.

Obama would provide $80 billion in tax breaks, mainly for poor workers and the elderly, including tripling the Earned Income Tax Credit for minimum-wage workers and higher credits for larger families.

He also would raise income taxes, capital gains and dividend taxes on the wealthiest. He would raise payroll taxes on taxpayers with incomes above $250,000, and he would raise corporate taxes. Small businesses that make more than $250,000 a year would see taxes rise.

MCCAIN: "She's been governor of our largest state, in charge of 20 percent of America's energy supply ... She's responsible for 20 percent of the nation's energy supply. I'm entertained by the comparison and I hope we can keep making that comparison that running a political campaign is somehow comparable to being the executive of the largest state in America," he said in an interview with ABC News' Charles Gibson.

THE FACTS: McCain's phrasing exaggerates both claims. Palin is governor of a state that ranks second nationally in crude oil production, but she's no more "responsible" for that resource than President Bush was when he was governor of Texas, another oil-producing state. In fact, her primary power is the ability to tax oil, which she did in concert with the Alaska Legislature. And where Alaska is the largest state in America, McCain could as easily have called it the 47th largest state — by population.

MCCAIN: "She's the commander of the Alaska National Guard. ... She has been in charge, and she has had national security as one of her primary responsibilities," he said on ABC.

THE FACTS: While governors are in charge of their state guard units, that authority ends whenever those units are called to actual military service. When guard units are deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, for example, they assume those duties under "federal status," which means they report to the Defense Department, not their governors. Alaska's national guard units have a total of about 4,200 personnel, among the smallest of state guard organizations.

FORMER ARKANSAS GOV. MIKE HUCKABEE: Palin "got more votes running for mayor of Wasilla, Alaska than Joe Biden got running for president of the United States."

THE FACTS: A whopper. Palin got 616 votes in the 1996 mayor's election, and got 909 in her 1999 re-election race, for a total of 1,525. Biden dropped out of the race after the Iowa caucuses, but he still got 76,165 votes in 23 states and the District of Columbia where he was on the ballot during the 2008 presidential primaries.

FORMER MASSACHUSETTS GOV. MITT ROMNEY: "We need change, all right — change from a liberal Washington to a conservative Washington! We have a prescription for every American who wants change in Washington — throw out the big-government liberals, and elect John McCain and Sarah Palin."

THE FACTS: A Back-to-the-Future moment. George W. Bush, a conservative Republican, has been president for nearly eight years. And until last year, Republicans controlled Congress. Only since January 2007 have Democrats have been in charge of the House and Senate.

___

Associated Press Writer Jim Drinkard in Washington contributed to this report.

Edited September 4, 2008 by dadmonson

[gags]

dadmonson, that article reads more like an editorial than a straight news story. The maintstream media are having a really tough time concealing the fact that they are in the tank for the Dems in this election.

[softwareNerd]

Time magazine reports on Palin's mayoral race. Unlike the typical race that hinges on local issues, Palin stirred up issues like abortion.

There are claims that once she was mayor, she was looking into banning books with objectionable language from the library.

[Once mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

[IchorFigure]

Egads, apparently the comments made by Palin are not as shallow as I had even thought. Apparently the church she was a member of has a very wacky world view.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/p...h_n_123205.html

Pastor Kalnins has also preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war "contending for your faith;" and said that Jesus "operated from that position of war mode."

They also literally believe that Alaska is going to be a sanctuary during the Apocalypse.

He preaches repeatedly about the "end times" or "last days," an apocalyptic prophesy held by a small but vocal group of Christian leaders. During his appearance with Palin in June, he declared, "I believe Alaska is one of the refuge states in the last days, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to the state to seek refuge and the church has to be ready to minister to them."

I don't even know what to say. I thought that Obama's preacher was a nutcase, but...

[NineInfinity]

Humor for the day: P.Diddy rants about McCain choosing Sarah Palin:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow8_pCPfhDk

(nws language)

"Alaska? There ain't even no black people in Alaska!"

[RationalBiker]

Humor for the day: P.Diddy rants about McCain choosing Sarah Palin:

I was unaware that he was capable of such meaningful and critical analysis.

(Internet Communication Advisory: The preceding sentence is laden with extreme sarcasm.)

[agrippa1]

Time magazine reports on Palin's mayoral race. Unlike the typical race that hinges on local issues, Palin stirred up issues like abortion.

There are claims that once she was mayor, she was looking into banning books with objectionable language from the library.

There's no arguing that Palin holds some pretty strong Christian Conservative views, but I haven't seen any credible reports that she acts on them politically, unless you count these ones from the mayor who she knocked out of office (not exactly an unbiased source), and even these do not include any example of her actually taking those actions. The claims that she threatened the not-reachable-for-comment Baker unless she supported Palin... Well, when she took office, she "threatened" the jobs of all sitting administration officials, who worked for her and reported to her and for whose performance she was now responsible. She told them to submit their resumes and pledge support to her administration. What she didn't do, but had every right to, was fire the whole lot and put her cronies in their place. True, that would have been harsh in a small town, but the story is not as clear cut as ex-mayor Stein would have us believe.

I'm not completely in the tank for Palin, but I see her conservative views as a much more abstract threat to me than Obama's socialist ideology. This is self-serving, yes, but most of my actions fall in line with how Palin thinks people should behave (independently & responsibly). I've never been involved in an abortion (except the ones my tax dollars pay for), so that issue is pretty abstract to me. My money, on the other hand is a daily concrete demonstration of gov't action. I spend at least two hours of each day in indentured servitude to the government. Obama wants to make that, what, three hours? And the harder I work, the more hours he wants me to spend on his plantation. Thanks, but no thanks.

[agrippa1]

Here's an analysis of the book-burning story from Wall Street Journal. Not exactly the red meat the leftist media was hoping for, but then again, most of them are vegetarians...

(Note: link is for "today's" edition. Won't be good after about tomorrow noon)

[softwareNerd]

Here's an analysis of the book-burning story from Wall Street Journal. Not exactly the red meat the leftist media was hoping for, but then again, most of them are vegetarians...

That's an op-ed, and James Taranto is a religious conservative. I take anything he writes with a large pinch of salt. Nevertheless, the facts seem to be that Palin asked the librarian about the process of banning books (the WSJ reported this as news a few days ago) and the librarian mentioned that they did not do such things. Palin never mentioned any specific books, nor did she actually attempt to ban any. Those tales were mostly blog-based; I don't know if the mainstream media reported it as news.

Left-wing intellectuals are not supporters of free-speech either.

[agrippa1]

That's an op-ed, and James Taranto is a religious conservative. I take anything he writes with a large pinch of salt.

I read Taranto just about every day for entertainment value. I don't recall him being overtly religious, and a search has him describing himself as "mildly pro-choice."

He occasionally uses turns of phrase that make me believe he is more than mildly acquainted with Ayn Rand and Objectivism.

[JMartins]

(CNN) — Hours after calling the economy ‘strong,’ John McCain appeared to clarify the comment Monday afternoon, minutes after he was derided as "out of touch" by the Obama campaign.

"My opponents may disagree, but those fundamentals of America are strong," McCain said at a campaign event in Orlando. "No one can match an American worker. Our workers sell more goods to more markets than any other on earth. Our workers have always been the strength of our economy, and they remain the strength of our economy today."

“But their efforts are not being matched at the top," he added. "From Washington to Wall Street, the top of our economy is broken. We have seen self interest, greed, irresponsibility and corruption undermine the hard work of the American people."

So, in a nutshell: The workers are the strength of the economy, and the ones trading the goods, while the executives are the greedy and self-interested causes of corruption that undermine the workers and the economy in general? He did, at least, say that Washington was partly responsible -- I fail to see how McCain and his band of lobbyists will remedy the situation however.

Also, by reading this transcript of a talkshow McCain recently attended (along with Whoopi Goldberg), you will see that he is clearly a great scholar of the Constitution, proudly standing up for its principles:

GOLDBERG: Should I be worried about being a slave, about being returned to slavery because certain things happened in the Constitution that you had to change.

McCAIN: I, I understand your point.

GOLDBERG: Okay, okay.

McCAIN: I understand that point and I, I, [applause] thank you. That’s an excellent point.

GOLDBERG: Thank you sir.

McCAIN: And I thank you.

Edited September 15, 2008 by JMartins

[IchorFigure]

He did, at least, say that Washington was partly responsible -- I fail to see how McCain and his band of lobbyists will remedy the situation however.

Especially if "reform" means something along the lines of more Sarbanes-Oxley's.