Subscribe18. (ASKED OF REGISTERED VOTERS) Do you think [NAME] does or does not have the kind of experience it takes to serve effectively as president, if that became necessary?
...
Does Does not No opinion
b. Sarah Palin
9/29/08 RV 35 60 5
9/7/08 RV 47 45 8
9/4/08 RV 43 51 6McCain's crowds went from 300 people to 30,000
"The McCain-Palin campaign paid Amy Strozzi, the GOP vice presidential nominee's traveling makeup artist, $22,800 for the first two weeks of October, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission last night. Strozzi received $13,200 for her work in September.BTW -- they also have incurred expenses for Palin's stylist to travel with the campaign.
Records show McCain's makeup artist, Tifanie White, received $8,512 in September and $7,368 during the first two weeks of October.
The Republican National Committee paid a third makeup artist, Tracy Thorp, $980 for work in September.
In total, that's an expense of $52,000 for makeup artists during a six-week period beginning Sept. 1.
Ben Porritt, a spokesman for McCain-Palin, declined to discuss the makeup expenses. 'Our campaign is focused on talking about the issues,' he said."
If Bobby Jindal can survive his political struggles in Baton Rouge, then he may be a better choice for the GOP than Palin.What is left of the Republican Party will not stomach nominating a negro.
Romney could try again and do well if Obama can't right the economic ship.What is left of the Republican Party will not stomach nominating a Mormon.
If Rossi wins up here I can see the GOP drafting him as the "next Dubya" -- his lack of experience doesn't seem to be hurting him.What is left of the Republican Party will not stomach nominating someone who believes that abortion in cases of rape and incest is acceptable.
And Lindsey Graham I think has the right sort of mix of experience and bona fides to be a compromise candidate for the warring GOP factions.What is left of the Republican Party will not stomach nominating an obviously closeted homosexual.
Palin isn't running for president in 2012 is because she would have to give up the seven-figure contract she'ss have signed with Fox News to host a show following her defeat in the 2010 governor's race.Another part of my optimistic yet Schadenfreudic fantasy: Fox News will not be able to afford seven-figure contracts.
I am also willing to entertain this possibility. If by "not gay" you mean "hugs his knees and weeps at the thought of putting his winkle inside the dirty icky hoo-hoo of his wife but does so out a sense of duty to god.Lindsey Graham is unmarried.
To me, the complaints about Edwards weren't really justified but they served the purpose of the Clinton and Obama camps when it comes to showing Edwards as being out of touch and hypocritical.I guess maybe I didn't pay too much attention to the Edwards hair flap. It was the Clinton and Obama camps pushing this story? I thought that right wingers were pushing it.
Were I a serious, experienced female Republican politician, I'd be livid right now that my party was putting all its chips on a pretty lightweightI think that "lightweight" is not appropriate here.
Palin: 'I Don't Know' If Abortion Clinic Bombers Are TerroristsThat's because she's been palling around with them.
Palin also butted heads at times with Dick Deuser, the city attorney. Deuser was not your average small-town lawyer. He'd attended law school at the University of Minnesota and had worked for a prominent Anchorage firm. At one point, the council asked him about the legality of banning group homes--such as shelters for runaways--a position Palin championed. Deuser had an academic manner and was fond of citing Supreme Court precedent. When he explained that a ban would be unconstitutional, Palin appeared impatient with such legal niceties. "I would describe it this way: Sarah was not an in-depth person. Never has, never will be," Deuser says. "Her instincts are political as opposed to evaluative."Sarah is a throwback, a politician who doesn't care what is ethical or even what is legal. She just wants her own way. She reminds me more of Huey Long than anyone else.
Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline.Much of the rest of the article consists of various aids and advisors blaming either her or other aids and advisors. It's like a political Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with the presidency being the gold. I wouldn't be surprised if some time next week it's reported that Schmitt tried to smother Bounds with a pillow as he slept on the plane.
"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.
Today Palin gave her first policy speech in Pittsburgh, and with this one sentence she failed more spectacularly than should have been remotely possible in carefully written, highly prepared remarks:Ick! Science-- who needs it?! ....aside from everybody, I mean.
"Sometimes these dollars they go to projects having little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not!"
Why does this sentence hit home to me? Because I'm a molecular biologist [...] and I use model organisms like fruit flies every day in my research.
What could those little things have to do with helping humanity, right?
Other than providing the basis for the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1995, I mean. The Nobel that was awarded to Edward Lewis, Christine Nüsslein-Volhard, and Eric Wieschaus for discovering the methods by which an egg - a single cell - patterns itself into bodily segments. Which has helped us to understand severe genetic abnormalities that cause major body patterning defects.
"In [her] speech, Palin cited the need to do more for children with disabilities such as autism....Palin claimed that the amount that Congress spends on earmarks 'is more than the shortfall to fully fund IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act ].' She then ridiculed some of the projects — such as 'fruit fly research' — saying they have little or no value....she is apparently unaware that scientific research with fruit flies has led to valuable discoveries that have boosted autism research, as a study at the University of North Carolina demonstrated last year:'[S]cientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for...nerve cell connections to form and function correctly.The study of fruit flies has also been used for other autism research and 'revolutionize[d]' the study of birth defects."
The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.'
THEY. NOMINATED. A. WOMAN.Republicans do what they're told.
THEY. NOMINATED. A. WOMAN. Why wouldn't they nominate an Indian-American?Because he's a negro.
THEY. NOMINATED. A. WOMAN. Why wouldn't they nominate a Mormon?Because he's a Mormon.
THEY. NOMINATED. A. WOMAN. Why wouldn't they nominate an Italian-American?Because he's in favor of legal abortions in cases of rape and incest.
THEY. NOMINATED. A. WOMAN. Why wouldn't they nominate a... oh, yeah, never mind.Exactly.
“Your state is filled with good, hard-working people all loving the outdoors,” she said, “and it was nice and crisp getting off the airplane and coming into the — it reminded me a lot of Alaska, so I put my warm jacket on, and it is my own jacket. It doesn't belong to anybody else. My own jacket, for once, Alaska.”No word as to whether or not she is keeping Checkers, the dog, for the...sniff...children.
On Monday, the day before the Alaska governor appeared at a Reno rally, one of her assistants bought her a new suit for the occasion at an Ann Taylor store in an upscale Reno mall.Has she worn all the other stuff already? Maybe Goodwill just couldn't wait and snatched it all right out of the belly of the plane. Damn that greedy Goodwill Industries!
"She bought a short, three-quarter sleeve jacket, a skirt and a couple other items," store manager Suzette Ludden told the Reno Gazette-Journal.
“The fruit fly (Drosophila) has probably been the single most important organism for the study of genetics for over a century now. Almost everything we know about genetics, development, cell biology, neuroscience, and every other field of biology has strong roots in previous and current work on Drosophila. The fruit fly is one of a small handful of ‘standard model organisms’ used by thousands of scientists across the world to learn how our bodies, organs, genes, and proteins work. Most of what we know about how a single fertilized cell becomes the amazingly complex beings we are comes from studies initially done in Drosophila. Vast amounts of our understanding of the brain (and brain disorders, diseases, and defects) also come from initial studies in fruit flies.* -- Maybe not. In his calculus “fruits” may have been nothing more than “fags.” Not that there's anything wrong with that!
…To decry research in [condescending and amazed tone] ‘the fruit fly’ is a testament to the true idiocy of this woman and to the failure of our public education system. In fact, her own father, Chuck Heath, was a biology teacher – obviously a complete failure of a biology teacher.”
...few who have worked closely with the governor would argue she is truly ready to assume command of the most important, powerful nation on earth. To step in and juggle the demands of an economic meltdown, two deadly wars and a deteriorating climate crisis would stretch the governor beyond her range. Like picking Sen. McCain for president, putting her one 72-year-old heartbeat from the leadership of the free world is just too risky at this time.The Anchorage Daily News in endorsing Obama.
“We can do this,” Obama said. “Americans have done this before. Some of us had grandparents or parents who said maybe I can't go to college but my child can; maybe I can't have my own business but my child can. I may have to rent, but maybe my children will have a home they can call their own. I may not have a lot of money but maybe my child will run for Senate. I might live in a small village but maybe someday my son can be president of the United States of America.”Barack drew 100,000 in one location in Colorado, then 50,000 in another.
It’s boilerplate American Dream, and all candidates have a version of it. But this version touched my son. It evoked in him the possibilities at his fingertips, and he felt a part of something bigger than himself, his family or his small universe of friends and classmates. I could tell that his concept of “country,” and what it means to be an American, came into greater focus for him.
Naturally, his political tastes will change and become more nuanced and sophisticated as he gets older. But I hope he never loses touch with what he felt Sunday, that sense of potential and excitement not just for himself, but for the country as a whole.
I know it’s a simple credo, one upon which our country was founded, but it doesn’t hit home when you read it in a textbook. For my son, it never sunk in until he heard it from Barack Obama, as one of tens of thousands who took inspiration from his words that day.
I still remember the email that a woman named Robyn sent me after I met her in Ft. Lauderdale. Sometime after our event, her son nearly went into cardiac arrest, and was diagnosed with a heart condition that could only be treated with a procedure that cost tens of thousands of dollars. Her insurance company refused to pay, and their family just didn’t have that kind of money.As I read these words my heart is so full right now it feels like it might just squeeze itself right out of my ribcage.
In her email, Robyn wrote, “I ask only this of you – on the days where you feel so tired you can’t think of uttering another word to the people, think of us. When those who oppose you have you down, reach deep and fight back harder.”
Ohio, that’s what hope is – that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better is waiting around the bend; that insists there are better days ahead. If we’re willing to work for it. If we’re willing to shed our fears and our doubts. If we’re willing to reach deep down inside ourselves when we’re tired and come back fighting harder.
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posted by Mastercheddaar at 9:04 AM on October 24, 2008 [1 favorite]