| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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Palin is not a real woman because she is pro-life. Palin is obviously not intelligent because she is attractive. Palin is a horrible person because she is pursuing her career while having children. And then the strange logical leaps: Bristol's pregnancy is proof that abstinence-only sex education doesn't work. Seriously, abstinence-only sex education is more retarded than trig, but 17 year old girls are going to get pregnant even when they know everything there is to know about safe sex and have a free condom machines in every bathroom. Drivers ed doesn't work because kids get tickets and have accidents. Our education system doesn't work because Bush is president. Well, maybe that one holds. I am so fed up with uppity, arrogant liberal bullshit. If Obama does not get elected, it is going to be because of the bad seeds. The liberals who act like fascists. Most of whom probably live in SF. |
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Although I am now dying to read the crazed blog entries from people who claim that Palin is stupid because she's attractive. Link? |
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no blog for attractive/stupid. just listening to people talk. |
OH SNAP |
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anybody happen to watch the pbs coverage of the republican national convention? maybe it was just my imagination, but some of them (the pbs commetators) seemed tense. they began the coverage by talking about the hostility the republicans had toward the media, and it seemed like the commentators had gotten a little taste of it. david brooks in particular - in the beginning, he seemed rattled like someone had just threatened to beat him up. i'm not saying anybody actually had, but i got the impression that that something had them on edge. |
political party is no indication of intelligence, obviously. i just hate her idea for a solution to the energy crisis (the caption to go with the news of her nomination: drill drill drill). but i'm too far left to be lumped in with your standard liberals anyway. let's shoot everyone and leave the planet to the animals. |
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what irks me is that the daughter being pregnant thing would never have made news had Palin not been nominated for VP. why shouldn't anyone (regardless of political party) in public service get called out when their personal/family life reflects the exact opposite of their public policies? no one gave Cheney any slack for having a lesbian daughter, even though his public policy was to amend the constitution to not legally recognize gay marriage. |
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like rowlf, i think this a huge gaffe on mccain's part. for the first time this morning in national media, i heard an interview with a New hampshire voter, a woman, who was actually offended that mccain made this selection, as if by her simply being a woman, would pull former hillary votes. it is offensive and further shows how out of touch mccain is with even people of his own generation. i too question her decision to run despite having a special needs newborn and a knocked up teenage daughter. at the same time, is anyone questioning obama's timing to run with regards to his children? is that sexist? i dont know. you can quantify her family needs are soon to be 3x more demanding than obama's simply by the amount of children involved, but again, im not sure thats of any consequence. im still very pleased with this decision as i think it reflect exactly the kind of style of president mccain would be, in terms of decision making and it looks just like the last 8 years and with an approval rating at what...35% of the current admininstration, that bodes well for obama. |
that's incredibly sexist. the assumption is that palin has no worth other than her ovaries. palin is offensive because she is a woman, ted kennedy is sexist because he backed obama. "i too question her decision to run despite having a special needs newborn and a knocked up teenage daughter. at the same time" also incredibly sexist. did anyone rag on biden when he went ahead and became senator even though the death of his wife left him a single dad? but you're right, palin should forgo the VP nomination so that she can stay at home with the kids while her husband pursues his blue collar career in the oil fields. palin is going to appeal to a lot of middle america. it is the compelling story that obama talked about. she has nearly 12 years experience in elected office, and experience chairing the AOGCC. she's a working mom, blue collar roots, family, pro-life. she's a real person, and people are going to latch onto that. i really doubt she was picked to draw hillary supporters or stupid feminists. the liberal media says women would have to be stupid to fall for that, and there are all these women who actually share the values of palin who are wondering why they're being called stupid. the more i think about it, the less i think mccain is pandering at all. he's gambling a bit, she needs to hold her own in public appearances. but if she does, he's strengthened his base. |
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I feel like you're making strawmen in your post Nate. The argument is out there that comprehensive sex ed leads people to make more responsible choices, to make teen pregancy and STDs less frequent. http://www.advocatesforyouth.org/publications/factsheet/fssexcur.htm Have I seen some people saying "look what abstinence only education gets ya?" posts around. yeah. sarcastic ones, yes. I can't say I know of anyone out there who seriously think comprehensive sex ed = teen utopia. The pick has done one thing right: it has energized the evangelical base. I don't see why they wouldn't just go with Huckabee if that was the point (his own skeletons? sermons? i dont know, not relevant at this point in time). If executive experience was so important - again, coulda gone Huck, coulda had Romney - oh wait, Morman. So if the base was going to be excited anyways, the left exciting its base in reaction isn't something I'm too concerned about, and the mainstream all along wasn't grinning too hard about evangelical Huck in the white house, so why would Palin be any different? Look, there's advantages and disadvantages - underestimating Palin before she speaks lowers expecations to Bush-debate levels, over-vetting obviously leads to conspiracy theories, but I am cynical about this 'brilliant trap' theory out there, as if everything is playing out exactly as McCain wanted. He's irate, cancelling interviews, hiding, and the Reps have lost their narrative, their focus, and are in a place they don't like and are not good at being - the defensive position. As for her personal positions/examination - I'm not sure what sarah is saying about contradictions. The pregnant daughter thing is more of an ironic 'aha' moment. People knowing Palin is so pro-life and (many people are actually surprised to find that) McCain is too, may again - energize conservatives - but it makes the left and most women take notice and be concerned. With Palin and the daughter though, lets be honest and examine what this means: Many people, even otherwise religous people, find evangelicals self righteous about family values and like to see such people get taken down a peg, having to scramble to make excuses. In most other states, if it was their 18 year old son who knocked a 16 year old up, they would be registered as a sex offender/hit for statutory rape, not on stage at the RNC waving as he will be tonight. It's known now via the magic of myspace that this kid didn't want to be a dad, and becoming common opinion that this is a shotgun wedding to protect Palin's political interests. Every time the pregnancy thing hits papers, they are bringing up every other current allegation scandal within the same article. People know about troopergate, the AIP pandering.., The cloud of general controversy, even bullshit controversy, around a person McCain picked himself without vetting, is making a dent on his judgment and credibility - just as if the tables turn on Biden they would injure Obama's judgment. In addition Palin's celebrity (and you know McCain hates this) has eclipsed McCain, making McCain himself seem even less exciting, raised his age as a bigger concern. Is it bad that so many comparisons are being made to Obamas judgment vs. Palins? No, not really, no matter how easy you could knock down Sarah's experience. but guess what, that was going to happen with or without the public vetting of Sarah Palin. I think my analysis here is pretty honest, reasonable and informed. In the other thread I've been more dramatic, making it very clear I extremely dislike Palin, both on a personal and political level. But I'm not stupid - I can see the ups and the downs for what they are, and they're currently not good at all. I'm also not a clairvoyant, 60 days is a long time, the media wants a horse race and they will deliver one, the McCain camp has been able to play the refs before, debates are coming, you can't trust for any certain figurehead to say one thing too far that changes sympathies, or for the media to overdo it to a true backlash. And we haven't even seen the late night comedians and yes, SNL, take a swipe yet, and like it or not I think they play a major role in determining the perception war. |
Listen. In her FIRST SPEECH she played the Clinton card, talked about women are going to break the glass ceiling. Seeing as nobody can argue her experience outweighs the other Republican contenders, and after a week of PUMAs on Tv during the convention and McCain ads featuring former Hillary supporters, its perfectly reasonable for a Hillary supporter to believe they are being pandered to. "did anyone rag on biden when he went ahead and became senator even though the death of his wife left him a single dad?" Biden was a single parent who had to provide for his family, and he didn't have a down's syndrome baby with special needs. Whether he was working as a Senator taking the train home every night or at a cheese factory, he was going to be away from his kids during the daytime. I see what point you're trying to make, but its apples and oranges to me. "the liberal media" see, you've lost me. completely. The liberal media that played Reverend Wright clips 24/7. From where I sit up here in my icy socialist Canadian perch, the American media have only one bias - money. " the less i think mccain is pandering at all. he's gambling a bit" he's gambling on a pander. He wants both sides, the Hillary voter and finally bending over and taking it up the ass from the Dobsons and every other person he would have once called an 'agent of intolerance' |
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/09/anti-jewish-ter.html Now mind you, this may actually get play. There's video and Palin = money, but even I, an atheist who gets kicks out of religious people having to distance themselves from each other, don't want to see another 6 week inquisition over this. there's enough substantive political and character issues as it is without putting other peoples' words in her mouth. |
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trig has two parents. to say palin is doing something wrong by pursuing her career is sexist. if she were a man, no one would be saying a thing. bush has retarded twins, and no one criticized him for running for president. palin is being seriously underestimated. i started this thread after reading an op-ed about how bristol's pregnancy is evidence of the failure of abstinence only education. i can't find the article now, though. |
So would you acknowledge the decades of Clinton bashing for not 'staying home and making cookies' were sexist? I wasnt a big fan of her playing that claim very often, but I mean, you're no Clinton fan if I remember correctly. "by liberal media i mean that portion of our media that leans left. Daily KOS is an easy example." In the past you've said things that indicated to me you think the media is liberal as a whole. I think the media leans liberal on social issues, but would never say as a whole they are Democrat-leaning, and even think their social liberal bias plays largely on not offending segments of your audience - minorities, gays, etc. Anyone can register and rant on Daily KOS. When I think of liberal or conservative media, I'm thinking TV, radio, print - not random commenters looking to out-extreme each other to get attention. I'd say its fair to point at the main KOS bloggers as 'liberal media' - and I read that site, and dont see the main guys approving of attacking Palin on those grounds whatsoever. I don't see anything else on that site as any more 'media' than someones Livejournal. If you're looking for liberals saying sexist wful things, you will find them. The net is trash and I see the most extreme comments not on KOS, but on ABCnews, CNN, and Politico. Yahoo messages used to be the absolute nadir of discussion on the web. Bipartisan sites are the worst for sexist/racist comments because everyone there is fired up at each other, willing to provoke and step over the line, or venting all their frustration anonymously not realizing you're taking impressions of the left and right as a whole from them. |
i say reportedly as I can't find evidence at this moment. |
We're very much affected by US politics here, but will also acknowledge that we consider US politics a spectator sport. I wonder if I'd either be a top rank piece of shit professional message board spammer like on the sites listed above, or I'd snap and become so disgusted with everyone that I'd shack up with some independent party that doesn't even line up with my views. From here though, I can get mad at certain pundits, but I cut a lot of people, even people I hate, a lot of slack because they're part of my overall entertainment and don't feel they represent "my side" enough to make me look bad by association. |
There's saying something is evidence of the failure, and then there's saying something specific is the definite RESULT of abstinence only education. Bristol's pregnancy is as much a statistic towards some overall study of comprehensive vs. abstinence only education as anyone elses. For all I know Bristol's specific pregnancy is a result of pandas. Once again back to sexism and daughters, John McCain once joked; "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father". He's used the word 'gook' repeatedly and unapologetically. These things haven't come up beyond the liberal circle jerk sites, but are very much true. I will acknowledge that if a woman had said these things, even if they were as entrenched politically as McCain is (I think this halps him get away with a lot, Biden too), they would be considered a lot more outrageous, simply because of expectations of politeness put upon women. If you're too much of a mom, you're fucked, if you're too much of a man, you're fucked. I acknowledge the meida is unfair to women candidates, but its not a get out of jail free card either. Let's say Sarah Palin cries during her speech tonight when talking about her family. It is more likely she, like Hillary, would be criticized for showing too much emotion, whereas when men do it its seen as 'passion' - that is sexist. Examining whether showing emotion in a speech is politically motivated itself - is that sexist? I dont think so. |
By Nate on Wednesday, September 3, 2008 - 03:21 pm: "i too question her decision to run despite having a special needs newborn and a knocked up teenage daughter. at the same time" also incredibly sexist. did anyone rag on biden when he went ahead and became senator even though the death of his wife left him a single dad? but you're right, palin should forgo the VP nomination so that she can stay at home with the kids while her husband pursues his blue collar career in the oil fields. *** you're funny dude. i love how you conveniently left off the part where i question the relevance of it and consider the lack of examination of Obama (or Biden's) familiy situation sexist and generally write the matter off as of little consequence. love them nate liberal media bias |
If Palin is smart though, if she makes her speech very personal, she should try to make accepting the VP job as a very difficult decision/sacrifice. The Obama/kids stuff actually DID come up early in the campaign, often having to explain all the promises Obama had to make to the wife and kids for them to agree about the campaign. I think Barack still owes them a puppy, and I'm not sure his current status on quitting smoking. |
Here's one: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=5713866 Sarah Palin is moral police enough to inquire to the local library about banning books, but will alledgedly fire a police chief, who shortened closing time at the bars from 5am to 2am to crack down on an increase in drunk driving in the area. And yes, I am fully aware Republicans aren't the only people who mix up freedom with 'wont somebody please think of the children!' moral nannyism. But I'd say its more reasonable to make that change on a drunk driving law than it is to keep kids from reading the Golden Compass. |
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whoops. I meant conservative. Dr. Laura FREAKS OUT on Palin, but is still voting McCain: http://www.drlaurablog.com/2008/09/02/sarah-palin-and-motherhood/ "I’m stunned - couldn’t the Republican Party find one competent female with adult children to run for Vice President with McCain? I realize his advisors probably didn’t want a "mature" woman, as the Democrats keep harping on his age. But really, what kind of role model is a woman whose fifth child was recently born with a serious issue, Down Syndrome, and then goes back to the job of Governor within days of the birth? " "I am haunted by the family pictures of the Palins during political photo-ops, showing the eldest daughter, now pregnant with her own child, cuddling the family’s newborn. When Mom and Dad both work full-time (no matter how many folks get involved with the children), it becomes a somewhat chaotic situation. Certainly, if a child becomes ill and is rushed to the hospital, and you’re on the hotline with both Israel and Iran as nuclear tempers are flaring, where’s your attention going to be? Where should your attention be? Well, once you put your hand on the Bible and make that oath, your attention has to be with the government of the United States of America. " |
that's what you wrote. you question if women with children should have jobs, and then go on to wonder if anyone with children should have jobs. and maybe the number of children you have is what is important in determining whether or not you should have a job. though, admittedly, you caught more general venom from me than deserved. my point still stands. it isn't when it comes from patrick that bothers me. it is when it is brought up as a question in an interview on N fucking PR. it isn't about women's equality or women's rights, it is about women fitting into the republican mold or the democrat mold, the traditional mold or the femi-progressive mold. i'm voting for obama because micky-O is one hot piece of ass. fuck this cracker milf. ultimately it only matters how diebold votes. |
"what the hell is a woman with a 4 month old child with downs syndrome doing away from home on the campaign trail? I hate kids, and frankly - I'm kind of rude when it comes to all handicapped people, I'm an asshole that way - but I don't think wagging my finger and saying "Bad mom" is out of line." I can try to justify it by the needs of the non stop campaign trail for two months vs. having the job, as well as it being a downs syndrome baby - not a toddler or teen, but a baby, but its far from a perfect defense. When I wrote it I was mad about a lot of things freshly learned about Palin so everything seemed worse than it actually is. |
i admit i could be completely fabricating that mental image. thats milf soon to be gmilf. |
if it takes certain parts of the media misbehaving to keep mccain out of office, i think im ok with it for now. as far as im concerned its a back alley knife fight after two terms of GWB.... |
nate getting all cerebral than wildly inappropriate patrick stuggling to form cohesive thoughts which he often backpeddles only minutes later and rowlf putting together tomes of reasonable points of view on the matter which is shocking considering the fucker doesnt even live in this country. |
boring. redneck. toys. Shoot Em Up was boring. Wanted was boring. Even Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder were infinitely less entertaining for me, because guns are boring. Swords are cool, a hammer to the head is cool. a screwdriver in the eye is interesting. chainsaws, daggers, anything else please but a gun. The only movie all summer that got guns right was Dark Knight. Why? That movie doesnt show you shit, but the guns are LOUD. Anyways, that was a tangent. Football, new country and NASCAR are also boring. processed cheese sucks. I hate apple pie. I would not win blue collar votes. |
If I wasn't already Canadian, I don't know where I could live. And don't say San Francisco, hippies are another misanthropic case study altogether. Vermont? Austin? |
http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/9/3/161925/2509/510/579198 they left their live mikes on: amongst other goodies: Peggy Noonan: "It's over" |
drop a brick of velveeta in a pot, toss in a can of Rotel. Simmer....you got yourself some bitch snackin. i live with a foodie who happens to be a total cheese nazi and even she caved when i made that one what doesnt get played up rowlf is many religious people pray for a quick and speedy death before hunting and also make every effort to use the entire carcass. of course there are jackasses who hunt purely for sport but i dont think thats the majority. nate probably doesnt realize it, but he's partly responsible for my switch on gun rights. i believe it was on here somewhere sometime when he posed the simple question of 'why should they (federal gov't) be the only one's armed?) the manner of which our government has progressed in the last decade i have to agree. that and being intimately involved with a hot gun owner helped my migration to a supporter of the second amendment. im looking to make a my first gun purchase upon my move back to north carolina. |
drop a brick of velveeta in a pot, toss in a can of Rotel. Simmer....you got yourself some bitch snackin. i live with a foodie who happens to be a total cheese nazi and even she caved when i made that one what doesnt get played up rowlf is many religious people pray for a quick and speedy death before hunting and also make every effort to use the entire carcass. of course there are jackasses who hunt purely for sport but i dont think thats the majority. nate probably doesnt realize it, but he's partly responsible for my switch on gun rights. i believe it was on here somewhere sometime when he posed the simple question of 'why should they (federal gov't) be the only one's armed?) the manner of which our government has progressed in the last decade i have to agree. that and being intimately involved with a hot gun owner helped my migration to a supporter of the second amendment. im looking to make a my first gun purchase upon my move back to north carolina. |
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"The choice of Sarah Palin IS a Hail Mary pass, the pass the guy who thinks he has a good arm makes to the receiver he hopes is gifted. Most Hail Mary passes don't work. But when they do they're a thing of beauty and a joy forever." "More immediately and seriously on Palin: Because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers and is Alaska Tough, as Time magazine put it; because she is conservative, and pro-2nd Amendment and pro-life; and because conservatives can smell this sort of thing -- who is really one of them and who is not -- and will fight to the death for one of their beleaguered own; because of all of this she is a real and present danger to the American left, and to the Obama candidacy. She could become a transformative political presence. So they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick. And it's going to be brutal. It's already getting there." |
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Prayer doesn't do much for me. Ah, that reminds me of my ultimate fear: SQUIRREL MELTS hunting plus rodents plus cheese http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RlK0Xd4c2c My grandfather owned a lot of shotguns, and I bet they're still in the house. I played with them when I was a toddler. He let me, and took pictures. That's about my experience with guns. Well sort of, I don't know if wisper ever mentioned how we went back to school this past year. Well there was a lockdown when someone was seen, or supposely seen, entering the school with a shotgun. It hit the news pretty much right away. I don't remember being particularly freaked out, our classroom was especially secure, but when the building was abandoned, man, the air of fear and freakout was intense, and my parents cried and cried and cried on the phone when I spoke to them that evening. A friend of a friend in college bought some fake replica and drunkenly flashed it out at a party. We thought it was real, And this was an irresponsible, stupid person who jumps through large campfires for fun. I would seriously not be around anyone with a gun unless I was confident they were trained and responsible. I happen to think most people aren't properly trained to run their dishwasher, let alone a weapon. That's about where I stand. I don't think even I am as paranoid about the US government as Americans seem to be. I don't pretend like I get it. Never had a gun toting friend to explain or share the rush, never felt the urge to fire a weapon, not even a paintball gun. Maybe it comes down to the way our government works. They really are our slaves and are more afraid of us then we are of them. Negative campaigning is pretty much dead here because whoever goes most negative usually loses. No press secretaries - the leaders yell at each other on the floor every day. Lots of ombudsmen checking corruption. We threw the leading party out for throwing away a fraction of a fraction of what the US mysteriously lost in Iraq that nobody seems to care about or even know about. I really don't feel that paranoid. I mean, I would imagine that with massive corporate ratings driven news and a secretive government (even when the Dems are in) and the most powerful military in the world, this could lead to your mindset? Can you even psychoanalyze yourself about this sort of thing? I mean, I just called myself "pro-gun rights" in my last posts, but if you pressed me with a bunch of regulatory questions, I'd probably approve of a number of measures you might think are too restricting. Again, a matter of ones background? |
I really would rather hang with the snobbiest asshole liberals than live in Kentucky. Elitist or not I'd really pick that. I grew up in New Brunswick, which I can say rural Ohio, north Kentucky and western Pennsylvania in the States have reminded me of when I visited there, and I'd never go back. Everything I know about San Francisco is based off of Full House, Robert Crumb comics, and a Patton Oswalt routine. |
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Considering how hard it was for Obama to convince so many people he shared mainstream American values, which was partially due to painting him as a foreigner... I actually don't get how Alaskans or Hawaiians can connect to mainstream Americans, not on a personal level, but on the level of honestly understanding their needs. Geography does matter. For all the AIP controversy, I get why Alaskans would have separatist sentiment and don't even hold it against them whatsoever. But if they consider themselves cut off from the country, I don't think their prominent presence in Washington does much for the American people as a whole. Would any of you object if Alaska left, other than the fact that they would bleed the US economy dry? |
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I just wonder where the thought, consideration, and compassion of some of these religious people are when they put the life of a fetus over a raped teenager, deny their children blood transfusions for religious purposes, and cut off their children from their family for being gay or even marrying into a different faith or denomination. I mean hey, if they respect the animal they're killing, great - I'd rather they respect it than throw it on their head and make jokes, obviously. In three hours I will munch on an animals nobody ever cared for or named. It it were all about honor and acquiring food and making one with the land and blah blah blah religious experience, I could completely cede the point. But I've been to Outdoor World. If it were all honorable and shit. I've seen the expensive accessories. I've seen everything they've done to make killing animals fun. I've seen all these gimmicky things that should pretty much rob any religious or respectful side to the experience whatsoever. And sorry, but the fact that there are hunting TV shows and DVDs where these people throw down money to watch OTHER PEOPLE kill animals? What kind of thrill is there from seeing someone else kill a deer, honestly? Why not watch a video of someone driving their car through a flock of geese? I've seen just enough from the hunting (fishing, meh, doesnt bug me so much. its fish) stores to turn it into a tacky Niagara Fallsish joke to make the prayer shit seem like its an apology to God for enjoying the slaughter of his creation. i mean, this is pretty cynical of me but Ted Nugent hasn't done much to convince me to strap on a flak jacket and shoot Bambi. |
Am I a dick because I won't even set foot in the States until Bush is gone? Its a worthless personal protest, but I'm doing it. I'd be hard pressed to go to L.A. for any reason. Even New York. If I hit the U.S. to visit anywhere, its either Savannah GA, Seattle or Portland. I've seen the East coast enough times to never want to go back, and if I could wish Florida away, I probably would... I guess if I had to leave Canada, I'd end up in Scandinavia and encounter an all new set of misanthropy (Left wing governments, right wing fascist rebellion. Viking obsessed anti-christians. Black metal.) Hell, maybe France. France certainly doesn't rock, but it would seem like a pretty livable 'fuck you' option. |
do you base that on first hand experience? trust me, im not one to argue the point after 12 years. i cant wati to get out of here. but you hear so much shit about LA by people who have never set one damn foot in LA County. there are good reasons why people come here and stay. there really are. our house up in the hills, friends and family visit, sit on our back deck, admire the canyon vista and say "holy shit I can believe im in LA" for example. Its really fucking beautiful where i live and im 2.5 miles from downtown. the problem is, it would cost upwards of 700k to own a home where i live. Savannah, Wilmington, NC or Charleston SC were on our list of destinations. Southern river/port towns. Instead were settling for either Durham, NC, Chapel Hill or one of two small towns outside either. I'll know more after this weekend after the woman flies there to make an offer on a house. |
Palin = money. Enquirer says Palin had a fair with her husbands business associate. http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzRiNDZkODEwMzdkMThmOTQ1NjFjOGNlNTUzYzA1NmY= I only bring it up because after the Edwards thing, this will spread. Brutal indeed. |
No. I've done enough tomes today to do a rambling thing about it. Another time. I might end up in San Diego one day though. (Comic-Con) |
You have a place to crash in the SF bay area, if you ever make it here. |
As a comparison to people questioning Palin's motherhood, saying its sexist: Remember about Edwards being criticized as a bad husband for running while she had cancer? If Todd Palin had cancer and it was said that she was a bad wife, it would be a big uproar... Edwards was beaten around pretty badly for a while back then, not much of a stink was made about the fairness of his treatment as far as i can recall. |
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my sister once hand-delivered ro*tel and velveeta to expatriate friends in london. |
1. Tomorrows Post recovers emails showing Palin deep in Troopergate: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/03/AR2008090303210_pf.html 2. Alaska no. 1 in the country in earmarks http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-03-22-earmarks_N.htm 3. Many of the earmarks McCain called most objectionable... came from Palin http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-earmarks3-2008sep03,0,6851593.story |
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Maybe its what they want, but its condescending bullshit. I said earlier that expectations were massively lowered, but I dont get how this could meet them for anyone but the diehard spinanythings. |
i'll be glad when the convention is over and we can get on to real debate. |
between Romney, Giuliani and Palin, all they did to me was morph into the 2004 Convention Republicans featuring Zell Miller. If anything, they are now more "More of the Same" than they've ever been. Typical, raw, red meat tricks. Is it what the crowd there wants? Of course, but is it really what the country wants, or just what you WORRY what the country wants? |
it is what i know for a fact that a significant portion of the country thinks it wants. on my bus ride to work today, i listened to the bus driver and a passenger discussing politics - both were stridently republican. i'm just suggesting that liberals/democrats are more out of touch with "the common man" than they realize they are. it's all tricks, it's all smoke and mirrors - but it's still politics and it's how you get power. |
Did I like the content of the speech? No. But you'd be an idiot not to see that a lot of people at the convention (and elsewhere) obviously dug it. |
Droop, you do live in cow town, remember. That ain't an accurate cross section of the country. Living here can make one despair for the soul of man, but there is hope. |
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"fuck poor people!" and the audience bellowed with laughter. you think that sort of thing ISN'T going to come back at them tenfold? |
I just can't stand the family shots, and Cindy McCain fawning all over that baby etc. I can't think of the word -- not quite incestuous, but certainly smarmy. Mind you, I was squirming too when Biden's son introduced his father, and after speaking about losing his mother, talking about Biden's 2nd wife, whom he said that he, his siblings, and his father all "married." Another speech construct that I absolutely abhor is that of naming somebody who the politician met on the campaign trail and is usually down on his luck. "In Ohio, I met an out of work, middle-aged steel worker named John Smith, who looked me in the eyes, and asked me, 'What can you do for me and my family'" blah blah blah. I think Reagan started that trend, and I really hate it. |
Commentators (left and right) are pointing out that she hit the folksy note dead on, with shit like "we don't want a candidate who talks about us one way in Scranton, and another way in San Francisco." She angled for those Ordinary Joes (many of whom totally support, uh, "shitting on poor people," as crazy as that sounds). She used so many tropes that I was writhing through the entire speech, but people like that. I think the Republicans even like the fact that she's a total bitch. They obviously loved it when she trotted out the fam' (although yeah those shots with the baby being passed around like an accessory...gah). Note how there was no actual policy in the speech. That was a nice touch. |
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did you see the cut to her little girl licking her hand and smoothing out the baby's hair....then there was another cut of the same little girl nit picking the baby's face. awesome. |
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I have to say, seeing McCain on stage last night next to all those fresh-faced Alaskans...he looked OLD. And I wonder why Cindy wasn't up there too. |
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http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0908/13143.html that's the article. |
yes obama (with biden behind him) is qualified to be president. |
Bush was absolutely qualified on paper, but obviously not when it comes to a number of personal traits you'd hope from anyone at any job - everything from political/image, enthusiasm, work ethic, judgment. It's the latter that puts an Obama on top instead of a Dodd. |
she doesn't have a lot of washington experience, but that's what mccain supposedly likes about her. that's a selling point. i don't remember if i've said this before, but i've been behind obama for president since his DNC keynote in 2004. i in no way think mccain/palin should be in control of our country. just to make sure that is clear. |
for the top of the ticket, the public are choosing who has the overall ability to lead, which is why Hillary and Obama can get ahead of a Kucinich, Dodd or Richardson... For a Veep pick, its one person/political insiders deciding something incredibly important for the country. The republicans put political purposes/getting elected ahead of the responsibility of the choice. A person can make the argument that Biden was the overall most qualified choice available. I don't see how you can make the argument for Palin. It's not just a Harriet Myers joke of a choice, its kind of a Clarence Thomas for SCOTUS / "Lets run Alan Keyes against Obama!" cynical joke of a choice |
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You're a lunatic. As mayor she presided over 53 employees and a 6 million dollar budget. Town doesnt even have a school system. Sheriff's office, police, library. That's about it. Obama has written 150 pieces of legislation as a senator, and has represented a hell of a lot more people in Illinois than Palin has in Alaska. Palin put her podunk town 20 million in debt, is 1st in the nation in earmarks, while California, one of the biggest economies in the world, is 43rd. Obama's campaign alone shows more organization, experience, and ability to lead than anything Palin has done. I'm Canadian. I somehow know this shit, and you don't. |
Bush was governor, of TEXAS, for 6 years before running for president. Carter served two terms as a state senator and a full term as governor, of GEORGIA, before becoming president. Clinton was Arkansas Attorney General, governor twice, chair of the National Governors Association, before becomign president Reagan was governor of California, one of the largest economies in the world, for 8 years, before becoming president. Alaska is the 3rd least populous state. Her biggest economic accomplishments were farming out money to Canada, and selling a plane on e-Bay. One of her top credentials is 'being against the bridge to nowhere' which is absolutely 100% false. McCain specifically in the last 3 years singled out her earmarks as examples of abuse. Anything else? |
Palin graduated from University of Idaho for journalism. McCain finished 894th of 899 in his military school Obama graduated magna cum laude from Harvard, and was the editor of the Harvard Law Review. Two books outlining his positions, writes his own speeches. 4 years in the national spotlight outlining his positions. Taught Constitunional Law for twelve years. Worked as a lawyer doing civil rights litigation and specializing in economic development for over a decade. What does Palin's education as a journalist get her? A sportscaster job for a couple years and the ability to read zingers someone else wrote. Said last year she doesn't think about Iraq. Do you REALLY want to tell me Palin is more experience than Obama? Is a year and half of badly running Alaska, and a while running a city out of a building smaller than a McDonalds, whose staff was only slightly larger than the voter registration drive Obama ran (700,000), more impressive than Obama's career? |
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Watcher, I want to apologize for my snarky tone. But you have to understand, I'm pretty goddamn pissed. Maybe you're the type to write anything I put off her since a liberal wrote it, I dont know, but the facts are what they are. I consider your vote in November extremely important, and not knowing some of these things absolutely sets me off when its this close to election time. I urge you to look at these things a little deeper, and if you really think another 4 years of Republicans is a better answer to the current challenges out there, I'm dying to hear why. |
not as a US senator, he hasn't. i mean, he's sponsored 131 and co-sponsored another 619, but who knows how many he actually drafted himself. |
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so today, i'm "working from home" and decided to take on the series of John Adams starring Paul Giamati. Im one disc in, wept a few times, and ready to take up arms against...... im not sure. i just feel betrayed, i feel betrayed by what this country was founded on, and what it is. then radiohead plays "you are all i need...youre alll i neeed" and i then i think about weeping some more...then i go jog with the dog. she's tired, can't keep up. this nonsense about palin, obama, is this what they thought we'd become? certainly not. not that this movie series is historical fact but where's the honorability? where's the honor in any of these fucks? and you wonder why i want a gun and four solid borders rowlfe? i feel betrayed. sold a bill of goods that dont stack up. money back. refund motherfucker. i dont want my daughter to suffer the same let down ive experienced. she doesnt deserve that. she or any other child. we have so much potential and we just piss it away and it permiates the whole lot of us and god damn it i want better. i want more. i want to be john adams, sam adams, thomas jefferson, george washington.......nervemind me....where are our heroes? we need a fucking hero and there seems to be none in sight. then i think about my daughter, 3000 miles away, in threat of a hurricane, and im stuck here, in this shit hole, awaiting the moving man to tell me i have 12,500lbs of shit thats going to cost me .....im guessing 8k to move. im not sure where im heading with this, but that.... oh and my insurance ran out so i have to pay full price to see my therapist.....which i cant afford cause.... im in a cycle here. sorry that said, its good to be around again and see everyone getting all 'tits in a tangle' (J) about things. one upnote is i will get to meet Giamati next month as he's starring in or Norman Corwin production of Rivalry...... |
I need to get around to "John Adams", I fucked up and didn't pick it up when it was cheap. I found "Bob Roberts" also maddening - its considered a left wing anti-right wing movie, but i disagree. Robbins attacks liberals the smartest way I've ever seen in a satire - he compliments people while also kicking them in the nuts, Vidal's character is intelligent but has no balls and can't defend a simple easily debunkable smear. Esposito's character is a somewhat good digging journalist but makes himself look retarded by the way he presents himself and pushes his stories. The movie as a whole is still very manipulative and mean-spirited, but it works. I've mainly been watching the Wire, which I finished about a week ago. Great fucking show. Might move on to Mad Men next. While typing i just found out McCain is going to accept the nomination... at 9:11 pm. I'm not kidding. "and you wonder why i want a gun and four solid borders rowlfe?" More today than I did yesterday afternoon. I hope the shows I like come back soon. I really feel like turning my brain to mush. There's no moderation with me lately, its been almost bipolar - either laughing silly happy or sour and angry. |
I truly appreciate your relentless honesty over these last couple days. I think I'm drunk off of allergies. |
funny, it was the whole pro-life/pro-choice thing that initially prompted my vegetarianism ten years ago. 'cause if i was pro-life, shouldn't i be pro-, well, life? that was a while ago. i don't like politics much, especially when people attempt to sway the public with smear campaigns and overly graphic propaganda and whatnot (you don't get pro-choice people bombing birth centers!).... making the election be decided by petty little things rather than the actual issues at hand. who the fuck cares about abortion and evolution/creationism right now (gosh darn it, keep your politics off my non-procreating vagina and your religion out of my hypothetical childrens' schools!)? i wanna hear some things that will affect foreign policy and the burgeoning national debt! the actual things that a president can have a great effect on! is this normal? gas prices can stay where they are, but when the price of everything's going up, they should be raising minimum wage too. more social services whenever possible, and more press about what's out there. and sorry mccain, you can't cover the protestors with chants of USA USA USA!!, even on the radio. |
"I fight for Americans. I fight for you. I fight for Bill and Sue Nebe from Farmington Hills, Michigan, who lost their real estate investments in the bad housing market. " Yes, he's fighting for the people who lost investments in the housing market. Poor lost investments. So, how about those folks who actually lost the homes they lived in? Know any of their names? |
i was in a special place yesterday. |
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"Nu-uh," says the McCain campaign. |
Rowlfe -- you're a sad case. I really do hope you're getting regular paychecks from the Obama campaign to frantically post endless hours of rabid drivel, because otherwise you're wasting huge chunks of your life ranting about politics (a vapid affair at best) in a FOREIGN COUNTRY. You come across as a highly unpleasant person. That's not helped by your prototypically Canadian neurosis about the US. A joke is made, which you humourlessly whinge about ad nauseum. The real problem is that Americans, right or left, who live more than 50km south of the border go months without thinking of Canada, but Canadians obsess every day about the States like some jilted stalker, or that ten year old who keeps trying to tag along with his college brother. For the record: there isn't a single person in the US who has spent ten minutes thinking about invading Canada, or wants that. I know, the only thing worse than hate is indifference. Sorry. Pretty much everyone here in this echo chamber is mired in the most knee-jerk group think. About the only one who makes some effort to see things through a lens other than his own prejudices and be somewhat honest about it is Nate, though then again that may just be his periodic love of being a contrarian and poking Patrick et al into a frenzy. I don't care if you believe that one candidate is better than another, for the country or your own selfish interests, that doesn't require a jingoistic demonization of the opponent and supporters as sub-human fascist baby-eaters. I mean really, you're willing to say anything and even believe anything that fits your self-identification with a political tribe. Grow up intellectually. I'm hardly a Republican, but my opinion is that the Palin pick was inspired politics and will likely win McCain the election, which he already had the edge on. Even -- no, especially -- if you dislike her/him, you should be taking the enemy seriously instead of reveling in a feel-good dittohead orgy of partisan mudslinging, juvenile namecalling, and laughable nutjob conspiracies from the Daily Krackpot, the fringe site that purged a Party member for suggesting that the Edwards disgrace was true. The Republicans are pathetic and have been politically incompetent since after Reagan; they damn well better thank God every single day for that savvy Republican-electing machine known as the Democratic Party. |
the polls right now are meaningless. obama was up after the dem convention. now mccain is experiencing his bump. |
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but i don't want to grow up intellectually. and sadly, it's true, i do enjoy attacking political opponents and supporters as sub-human fascist baby-eaters. it's fun! what i do want is to live a life of moderation and as free of worry as humanly possible, in a safe, fair, just, reasonable, peaceful, free society governed as little as possible, but governed by fair, just, reasonable civil servants who were fairly elected and work under my tax dollars to provide a safe, fair, just, reasonable, peaceful, free nation. i'm not going to get that, so instead the best i can hope for out of the choices presented to me, is for democrats to get elected this time around, and for them to deliver what they promise, and what i don't want is what the republicans promise to deliver. |
Don't make me get the goddam goat out of retirement to defend drivel. yeah team. |
right now and for the next 10 days a 100 goats are brush clearing a steep hillside in downtown los angeles. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-goats9-2008sep09,0,6190187.story bring the fucking goat daniel it couldnt be more relevant |
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158.12.86.14 http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.htm Fascinating. |
Lucy? Cat? :P |
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wow that web site sucks. |
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baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa wait. what sound does a goat make? |
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To any extent that a vice president nominee effects the outcome of a presidential election, one thing Palin seems to have done is give back in whole to the Republicans the vote of the southern religious right, who have been uninspired and probably were not going to vote at all this year. Also, more media attention. Because even negative media attention is attention being paid. Oh lordy. What has been interesting and somewhat frightful is how harshly she has been judged, particularly by women, for supposedly choosing to put her career first and her family second. As a working mother myself with only ONE child, I certainly don't understand her desire. I can barely handle my cushy little job and one baby -- I can't imagine having such a demanding, stressful job as the VP of the US, and managing a family of five. I love my job, I enjoy what I do, but if we had the means for me to quit to be a full time mom, I wouldn't hesitate to seize that opportunity. But I know a lot of women want kids *and* a career, and even if I don't understand it, I respect it. |
...deformed feet, crooked legs, abnormalities of testicles, missing testicles, more than 3 inch split in scrotum, and close-set or distorted horns...ouch goat!!!!! isn't the goat the symbol of someone's political party? Let's stuff some candidate in the box with the old goat (not to be confused the old goat nominee, the one who brings great shame to goatdom by ranting and raving religious right shit. If moose and goat ran the country, now there's a combination at the polls!!! I have moose receptacle and switchplate covers, moose toothbrush holders and moose sculptures in my log home, not the tacky decorator kind but the earthy real kind. I just can't imagine a goat switchplate cover, though Pan and another animal bottomed man cavort as switchplate covers in the guest bath and master bath. And then there is the antlered shaman on one toe from the gundestrap cauldron on the master bedroom's switchplate cover, hand carved in maple. But no goats. Any one who hunts moose is not a friend of mine. Mooseburger my ass. Wonder what the moose herds think of Palin? My goat can quote Edgar Allen Poe (his friend the raven speaks to him) and play the piano like a truly southern gentleman. He won't eat no sunglasses, straw hats, only long pants. And he loves small breasted laughter, hates elephants and donkeys, regards warm water as his element. |
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its little snippits like this from yesterday that outrage me. Obama makes a totally fair joke about putting lipstick on a pig, but its still a pig, a jab at McSame's co-oping of the idea of change and while taking a spin on palin's joke about difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull (lipstick) and the McSame camp responds by calling his comments "sexist". what the fuck is sexist about that? the fact that they would play the sexist card like that....isnt that in fact sexist in of itself? this shit is making my head spin. back to goats.... the woman is going to visit those hundred goats eating a hillside downtown today. she works two blocks away. its become quite a spectacle. goats are fucking awesome. |
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you had me at pit bull. what a scream! i can go on and on and on attacking political opponents and supporters as sub-human fascist baby-eaters! i can and i will! |
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07Inequality-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin |
Certainly in a clean well lit corporation-run big business prison here, there are some humans that perhaps smell like goats. http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/11-private-prison-expansion-becomes-big-business/ talk about running amuck. |
but the "lipstick on a pig" thing is a new one on me. i think it raises issues beyond sexism. the only way i can fathom that expression coming about would be when people started noticing that, oh sure, you can get the garter belt and stockings on them - but try put lipstick on a pig and the little teases just won't have it. there was a story on "radiolab" last week that began with two people driving down a country road and one of them spotting a goat standing on the back of a cow. but my dream is still to own a burro. |
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Baa Baa |
May be we need to volunteer to be politically active. And quit talking about change and make it happen. For the first time in my 57 years, I am thinking about going down to the Obama office in town and getting involved. Course he didn't have an ofice for the first 56 years I guess. And I am a Republican. Not that I voted for the party in the last several elections. And I certainly don't want to be confused with a conservative mooseeating religous man. Save the Baby Moose! Save the Baby Goat! Save the US from the Republicans! Make love and cheese!!! Not war!!! |
I think there is a rule about posting too much. Damn caffeinated goat coffee I had this morning. |
Not to detract from the bovid discussion, but the political point was really the irony that McCain really means it when he says that he'll reach out across the aisle. The night of the convention when Lieberman spoke was truly extraordinary; he was there as McCain's proxy to put the base of true believers on notice that now that he had the nomination, he was moving back towards the center. And they repeatedly cheered as Lieberman kept essentially saying -- at a major party convention -- that party loyalty was crap. McCain in his own speech said the same thing, and they followed along behind him. One of the network commentators got it, saying that in thirty years of covering American politics, he'd hever heard a candidate use his acceptance speech to talk about rooting out corruption in his own party. Not that that is necessarily a reason to vote for someone (though possessing civility and an open mind are not a bad one, either) -- you either think the candidate has mostly good policies or not, and I've got serious disagreements with many of McCain's prominent views. I happen to believe that "bipartisanship" is vastly over-fetishized; I prefer my government to be "gridlocked", thank you -- providing checks and balances that are absent when any group has sole control of the levers. Power does corrupt, no matter how well-meaning you are going in. If a leader doesn't have an outside influence playing devil's advocate and providing a sanity check, the syncophants and true believers with the identical worldview and biases who surround her/him are certainly not going to catch an egregious breach of realism. Obama doesn't have the slightest apparent inclination in reaching out to anyone not on his "team", including factions in his own party. Which is fine, if you believe that anyone who is a member of the Republican, Libertarian, Labor, Conservative, Socialist, Green, or Revolutionary Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist branch) parties, or (gasp!) doesn't sign their mind out to a corporate political herd at all, is wrong on every single political and social policy issue and has nothing to contribute. This kind of mindless scorched earth political warfare isn't good for the country, not even for the temporary victors. Us good, others baaaaaaad. |
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I'm trying to process JAA's post, to make sense of it. Obama doesn't have to say anything, as the media will do its dirty job. But there's a world of difference in bringing change and simply talking about it. Likely corporate America does not want change. I'm realistic that whomever gets elected will still have to deal with a corrupt congress and a judiciary that is more and more legislative in nature...we've lost our checks and balances. One man or woman in the spotlight will not change the devastating course to which this country is plighted and has been for some time. Let's talk about irs tax reform eliminating the fda, bringing military home safely, not reallocating to another hotspot, fed-induced housing crisis, bailouts, and sex. I don't view myself as liberal, but I know I am not conservative, labels that cease to make sense in the moose-baiting times in which we live. I just want, as others here have said, to live my life without big pharma and big government, and tend my goats, write poetry, and generally keep my mouth shut...but the last week's of politcal crap bring out the worst in me. My grandfather and father were small time politicians, and not very nice republicans, and I saw a lot in my youth, and drank excessively over the confused chaos of that life. Which is why I no longer live with my mobster relatives in New York, and hide out here in the woods of the Ozarks. Our multi party system is and always has been a sham. Read Founding Mothers and decide any different? Ascribing to any political herd mind is denying the fact that less government is better government. I disagree with both McSame's views and Obama's, but the latter may well precipitate less damage in this country and abroad. McSame will continue the alienation of our neighbors, anger our enemies, and destroy the rest of the middle class except for its use as a ploy to keep the poor from the rich man's door. (get better Droop!) |
:( What the fuck. I mean its clear that you can now say whatever you want and the media will be too scared about appearing biased to call bullshit on anything, but man the Republicans right now are really testing that theory to the full extent |
on the shitty liberals tip, i was walking on telegraph ave in berkeley this morning. awhile back, they had chalked on this one corner "WE SAVED THE TREES". see, there are some old oak trees. the university wanted to cut them down to build a building, but students protested and climbed the trees and, apparently, at some point, thought they'd won. but the truth is, the university has been cleared to cut down the trees. so, today, i watched a man chalking a new message: CUTTING DOWN THE OLD OAKS IS A HATE CRIME AGAINST WWI VETERANS or something to that effect. now, in the USA, we only have one surviving WWI veteran: Frank Buckles. he's 107 years old and lives in west virginia. what follows is a transcription of a phone conversation between myself and mr. buckles: FB: Hello? MTJ: Mr. Buckles? FB: Hello? MTJ: Is this Mr. Frank Buckles, veteran of WWI? FB: What? Hello? MTJ: Yes, Mr. Buckles? FB: Yes? MTJ: Hello, Sir, I am calling from California. I want to get your opinion on some oak trees. FB: Yes? MTJ: Yes, Sir, they are cutting down some oak trees in California. FB: Folk bees? MTJ: Oak trees, sir. The Memorial Grove. FB: No, not anymore. My granddaughter drives me most places. MTJ: What? FB: What? Hello? MTJ: Sir, oak trees. FB: Yes? MTJ: Do you feel hated? FB: Not in a long time, son. MTJ: Ok, thank you. Nice talking to you. FB: Hello? MTJ: Goodbye. FB: Oh, ok. Goodbye, then. |
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Of course, the Democrats giving up their racist past was more of a social evolution than magic trick - there's still a lot of disaffected Dixiecrats out there, but they are a dying breed. Speaking of racism, what is it lately with Republican politicians and the use of the word "uppity" in connection with black people? |
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That was before you were born, Nate. Jesus christ, man. Next you'll be complaining about those damn four wheel devil machines that don't need horses. |
and a hell of a lot of sexist democrats. and when you get a woman who has worked for what she has instead of sitting around bitching about wage-inequality and how porn is equivalent to rape, you see republicans get excited about it. the term feminism is overloaded and seems to have less to do with gender equality than with the right to kill your babies. that is scary to republicans. so it isn't so surprising that, with our pro-life anecdote of gender equality, we have republicans excited about women doin it for themselves. so maybe my earlier sarcasm is more audible, tiggy? |
You want to know scary? War with Russia? Sure. Had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was. And THAT doesn't scare republicans? No, of course not. God will save us. And don't even try to school me about racism and sexism, Nate. I live in fucking Texas, man. |
and maybe she does. or maybe, like krauthammer contends, the term 'bush doctrine' is reasonably vague and she just asked for further clarification on a vague question. i haven't thought about who is right on that, gibson or krauthammer, but i know how it looks. it looks like another example of the liberal media underestimating a woman and a conservative. it reeks of sexism (or, at least, holier-than-thou leftiness.) that's even more scary. people are sick of being talked down to by the 'liberal elite'. so, chalk another failure to the shitty liberals. the left is losing the war for hearts in a nation devoid of minds. |
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i know she's unqualified to be VP. i also know that it is embarrassing that so many americans think she is qualified to be VP. there was a time when the average american realized that he or she was not qualified to run the show. the strata of intellect was more or less in place, and people accepted that there were smarter people who should make the decisions. now, everyone feels empowered. who couldn't run this country? we no longer need the educated elite telling us what to do. we don't need their reason and facts and wisdom strained from the annals of history. FOXNEWS and CNN will dissect every issue into little pills that i can understand, and based on those pills i can now grasp complex issues. my opinions of things filter up through zogby and into the plans of our nation. i'm not defending palin. i'm lamenting the way the left is addressing her. the perception of the ivory tower left is as strong as it ever was. the revolt against the intellectual elite continues. everything is fucked. the american people are a dog on a leash. my biggest fear isn't mccain winning the presidency. that would be horrible, but my biggest fear is obama winning and nothing changing. then my paranoid thoughts about who really runs this country will be fully realized and impossible to subdue. democracy is probably dead. still, at the moment, i feel a shred of hope. probably because that is what the obama subunit of the machine wants me to feel. |
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Media doesn't do its job - McCain can put out as many lying ads as he wants and will be accepted as fact. see a problem here? You get in trouble for fighting back because you play in the mud and they beat you with experience, and you get in trouble for not fighting back because you get criticized for being spineless as you've been for a while now. I mean fuck, come on. |
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Palin is to a child what an experienced VP is to Palin. |
Like this. |
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Corporate media, pure and simple, always interested in helping the underdog to keep the race tight. Treating Palin like a child? I think I treat her more like the devil, which is my own bias, but I mean, christ, its being said now that her high school yearbook doubles for her staff once she took power, pure cronyism. paying for rape kits? pressuring local officials when she can't get her way? Listen, I think she's an idiot, in the same way I think many people who have bad ideas are idiots, and in some cases, like how she clearly doesn't know what the Bush doctrine is, she's an idiot in the sense that she has absolutely no business even being in consideration for VP. |
everybody's fine in dallas/fort worth, dr. pepper. all we got was a little rain. |
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suddenly it hit me: there's a federal election going on in canada right now; why isn't there a thread about that? there must be a message board somewhere where rowlfe is bitching about stephen harper. |
there must be a message board somewhere where rowlfe is bitching about stephen harper. " Here's the scoop. Nobody gives a shit. There's been an election just about every 13-14 months over the last 4 years, and each time it has resulted in a minority government situation. The Conservative party is currently in power, even though if you combine the other parties (all centre or left) they are outnumbered in parliament. Thus the conservatives more or less have to be a moderate government to make government work at all. Many Conservative party members are neocon-ish, but many others would be Democrats in the US. Aside from completely failing on environmental policy and the unpopularity of the Afghanistan mission, overall well... People aren't mad. The leader of the Liberal party couldn't inspire water to stay wet, so really a lot of people are voting for their local leaders and ignoring the federal ones, and the single issues people are voting on are hardly cultural ones by any stretch, and more on say, rallying against a shitty copyright law the Conservatives proposed. |
Also we don't vote for the leaders. So no drama there. The parliamentary system allows leaders and governments to be toppled so easily and quickly in theory that there's no cause for concern at this point (I say that now...heh). And if i may be so bold, the major hot-button or "sexy" issues have long since been decided and can never be overturned or changed. Abortion and gay marriage are permanently legal, capital punishment permanently illegal, these things can never to be debated again. So if it really floats your boat to hear about the child care tax credit or.... see i don't even know the issues off the top of my head. It's THAT boring. Oh there's some huge shit coming in the future of course, arctic type shit that i am genuinely terrified of and dread having to live through, but that's for another time. But this is election 3 in 4 years, and there's a very good chance there will be another one next year. And the year after that. We don't care. |
Let's put it this way. Even with the culture war still raging in the US, if you had an election every year it would be a hell of a lot easier to live with the Republicans winning. Sarah Palin turns out to be as bad a choice as it seems? Well just like if your teams loses in the playoffs, you don't have to set your clock for your chance to toss them out. I care more about the US election because it is so much more important and because I know the world is stuck with these people for x amount of time, and unlike when Harper initially ran years ago and kept losing, if Obama goes down, its not likely he will have X amount more chances to get in there. It's not wrestling, there aren't a dozen house shows to pull a switcheroo based on how the crowd is reacting. Also, the election was called Sept 7, and will happen October 14. I forget Harper's wife's name half the time and I work for the Canadian version of the AP. I know Dion's dog is named Kyoto but only because I had to make his profile page for an infographic. I mean seriously, with our snap elections we only get these little bursts of personality profiles and bullshit, and not enough time to get emotionally attached to a campaign. Before you know it, it's over, and they're back in the house yelling at each other every day, no press secretaries to shield the leaders from accountability. This system has its advantages and disadvantages but for me personally the big upside is it doesn't make my hair fall out from stress, doesn't ruin friendships. |
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wait, rowlfe, dont answer that. |
This is Your Nation on White Privilege By Tim Wise September 13, 2008 For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for an easy-to-understand example of it, perhaps this list will help. White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you, or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay. White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, who likes to “kick ass” if people mess with you, and who likes to “shoot shit,” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug. White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action. White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re “untested. ” White privilege is being able to say that you support the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance because “if it was good enough or the founding fathers, it’s good enough for me,” and not be immediately disqualified from holding office–since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the “under God” part wasn’t added until the 1950s–while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school) requires it, is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals. White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you. White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wanted your state to secede from the union, and whose motto was “Alaska first,” and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you’re black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful. White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do–like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor–and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college–you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist. White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look. ” White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt. White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America. White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced. White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism is, as Sarah Palin has referred to it a “light” burden. And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possible allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole “change” thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain… White privilege is…the problem. |
but, see, im one of the supposed privileged ones so what do i know. |
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And it still may not be enough. Carlton Banks wouldn't even be white enough for most people |
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There have been times when Obama has benefited from being black. And I'm not talking about shoring up such a huge percentage of the black vote either. Most polls from then indicate when the campaign started last year Hillary had the majority of the black vote. Obama simply won it over from campaigning and exposure, and Hillary lost it. But overall when race has been raised in the campaign, its not to Obama's benefit. There's enough people already who hate rich people governing them. Even more who hate intellectuals governing them. You add black skin on top of it and you have a shitload of hoops to jump through. |
Wright was a Marine. What political capital did he gain from that during the whole flap with him? How come apparently an apology for using the word "gook" was enough for McCain? Did his POW status write a blank cheque for that too? http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/hongop.shtml http://asianweek.com/2000_02_24/feature_mccainapology.html If Barack Obama left his cripped wife for an heiress, for ANY reason, would he be where he is today? Hell, if Barack Obama's wife had been white, would he be where he is today? I could come up with dozens more hypotheticals, and you can even come up with obvious ones that fall to Obama's favor, point being white privilege is very real and I would make the case any day of the week it far outweighs any black privilege that exists. |
"White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a “trick question,” while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced." What does this have to do with race? White privilege didn't get Palin out of being slammed for the bush doctrine question. And Obama is being accused of being dodging questions or being overly intellectual and nuanced? Jesus Christ, I guess Al Gore is black, too? |
Obama has had to fight the empty suit charge forever even though it's proven he can ramble on like a policy wonk, write his own speeches, head the fucking Harvard Law Review. Yet the times he does speeches with less policy details its all again back to 'no substance'. How long has McCain been able to dodge this entire campaign, even his own primary, without policy details? |
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all you have is examples of the same treatment we saw in kerry v. bush. kerry was a legit war vet, bush was a moneyed draft dodger, and yet that was all spun away by the republican media machine. white privilege? |
--------------------------------- The Triumph of Culture Over Politics Liberals always think there's something broken in politics. Conservatives always think there's something wrong with the culture. Why that gives Sarah Palin and the Republicans the edge in November. By LEE SIEGEL September 13, 2008; Page W1 Culture war, culture war! In our nation of revivals -- theatrical, cinematic and political -- this one sounds exciting, and promises a riveting new story line in the riveting presidential campaign. But the idea of a resurrected culture war is all sound bites and flurry, and not much else. FORUM How do you define culture? What role do you think culture will play in the November elections? DiscussA war requires two sides to fight it. Yet the Republicans are clamoring about the culture while the Democrats insist on sticking to the political "issues." It's not war but two parallel monologues. The Republicans are frictionlessly pursuing the same successful strategy that they developed over 25 years ago. That was when the Reaganites pronounced government irrelevant, even obstructive, to the improvement of social life, thereby shifting the Republicans' center of operations from politics to culture. In short order, the Reagan revolutionaries invited into their cause the Christian right, who set their self-contained cultural universe against secular cultural values that the liberals had never dreamed would be under explicit siege. Still, the Christian perspective had to be tempered and made more inclusive. Enter Allan Bloom. In 1987, Mr. Bloom published his bestselling "The Closing of the American Mind," an attack on what he perceived as coarse popular culture and a destructive political correctness at the universities. Taking up the Christian right's banner in his cosmopolitan intellectual's hands, Mr. Bloom married the religious right to the mostly secular neo-conservatives. He began the work completed by William Bennett in the latter's sensationally popular "The Book of Virtues." Mr. Bloom redefined culture as "values." Mr. Bloom gave the impression that it was hopeless to fight for his beloved Great Books because the Great Books had been driven to extinction by angry left-wing professors and vulgar forms of diversion. High culture was irretrievably lost to the average person. Culture for Mr. Bloom now meant not literature or art, but the struggle for the American individual's endangered "soul" (a word repeated throughout his book). This secular Armageddon was vividly embodied by Mr. Bloom in his now-notorious image of a solipsistic American teenager masturbating alone in his room while listening to deafening rock and roll. In one stroke, Mr. Bloom submerged politics irrevocably, and fertilely, in culture, and he defined culture in the broadest way as the necessity of living a meaningful life. Values, in other words. As a result of all this intellectual tumult, one stark distinction stands out among the differences between contemporary liberals and conservatives (the real differences, not the manufactured ones). Liberals always think that there is something broken in politics. Conservatives always think that there is something wrong with the culture. These conflicting urgencies have given the conservatives mostly the upper hand for over a quarter of a century. Since culture is more immediate to us than the abstract policies and principles of politics -- and seemingly more dependable than politics' often fluid expediencies -- a politics of culture is going to be more successful than mere politics. For many people, the idea that Republican politics are wholly responsible for the country's ills is hard to accept. You can't feel politics. Rather, such people blame a culture of selfishness and irresponsibility for the deepening malaise (the word that sank President Carter among liberals who thought they smelled a Christian conservative in progressive clothing). You experience selfishness and irresponsibility in the flesh every day. Let me clarify what the word "culture" means in this context, a la the Christian right and Mr. Bloom's descendants. If hearing the word "culture" makes you think of Rossini, the latest translation of "Anna Karenina," the Guggenheim Museum or "The Wire," then you're probably a liberal -- or, at least, an unreconstructed "cosmopolitan" conservative. But if the word culture means for you forms of courtship, or sexual preference, or the relationship between parents and children, or the set of rituals that revolve around the ownership and use of a gun, or, most passionately of all, ways of living, and believing, and rejoicing, and suffering, and dying that are hallowed by the religion you practice and embodied in the church you belong to -- if for you, culture does not primarily signify opera or HBO, then you are probably celebrating Sarah Palin's ragged, real-seeming life. In that case, you are what might be called either a heartland or a Bloomian conservative. Broadly speaking, liberals segregate culture from ordinary existence. They will "do" culture and then "do" the rest of life -- gaze at a Vermeer, say, and then work on finding the perfect daycare center. But for conservatives, raising children, using the discipline of faith to endure illness or setback, cherishing life at its conception are cultural tasks and values inseparable from the challenges of everyday living. The liberal idea of culture as edification or diversion implies abundant leisure time. The conservative idea of culture as the practice of getting through life (like the anthropologist's idea of culture) implies time under siege by work and adversity; this is culture defined as the meaningful beliefs and activities that are the response to necessity and adversity. Culture in this sense is as familiar as the eight-hour day, and as intimate as biological function. It is a matter of life and death. Call it organic, as opposed to fabricated, culture. This is why Thomas Frank's greatly influential 2004 critique of the Republicans' cultural strategy, "What's the Matter with Kansas?", has had such a negative effect on the Democrats' fortunes, for the simple reason that Mr. Frank assured Democrats that they didn't have to respond to the way the Republicans were manipulating organic culture. Mr. Frank cogently argued that the Republicans used cultural issues to distract their constituents from Republican economic policies which, ironically, were harming the very people who were voting for them. Mr. Frank believed that what Democrats had to do to win back the White House was to keep hammering away at Republican-induced economic disparities. Barack Obama's campaign is doing precisely that. For many people, however, faith in organic culture is intimate and empowering, while faith in politics is like trying to have a conversation with the TV. But organic culture has its squalid side, too. Blindness to the role culture plays in politics, even contempt for raising the subject, also lies behind the Democrats' fatal blindness to the brute fact of race in America. When, during the primaries, the Clintons seemed to allude to the subject of Sen. Obama's electability in light of his race, they were accused by many of their fellow Democrats of "playing the race card." It is fairly incredible that it was, for the most part, not until this summer that liberals began publicly asking themselves if the country was ready for a black president. That it was not until recently that liberals began wondering with any forcefulness whether people really were telling pollsters the truth about their attitudes toward race. ("Will race influence your vote for president?" "Race?! Me? Are you kidding? Of course not!") For 18 months, the majority of liberal commentators wrote so rapturously and unskeptically about Sen. Obama's candidacy that you would have thought he was just a white guy with a deep tan. It was as though people were afraid that if they spoke honestly about racism as a stumbling block to his candidacy, they would be taken for racists themselves. Indeed, it was as though by ignoring racist attitudes when writing about Sen. Obama, liberal commentators conferred on themselves the virtuous idealism that they were fantastically attributing to the country as a whole. It is an elementary psychological fact that we sometimes praise to an absurd degree what makes us slightly uncomfortable -- or that we put the source of discomfort in an impossibly ideal light in order to put as much distance as possible between us...and the person we fear we may actually be. Politics, by definition, is the art of making the abstract palpable and real. Within the realm of organic culture, abstract ideas about life are already embodied in life itself. Bill Clinton might have preached to the crowd in Denver about the importance of the "power of example," but it's the Republican strategists who practice that idea with consummate skill. Years ago, the Republicans seem to have abandoned Russell Kirk, the intellectual progenitor of modern American conservatism, for Mark Burnett -- the creator of "Survivor" and the father of reality television, a form of entertainment in which you come to relish the example of chastised ambition. Reality TV's winners earn your affection by running the gamut of ordeal and humiliation. In the same way, the Republicans have intuitively grasped a new, virulent strain of democracy, accelerated by the Internet, in which authority must be humbled before it is allowed to lead, or to lead again. Authority that is pre-humbled, as it were, has the tactical edge. John McCain's tale of ordeal as a P.O.W. in Hanoi doesn't only demonstrate his heroism and patriotism. It portrays his humiliation and the shattering of his ego, as Sen. McCain himself has stressed. The terrible image of Sen. McCain being beaten without mercy in some filthy torture chamber is an image of powerful authority -- a national politician, a United States Senator -- being made to bend to the higher power of malevolent necessity. It is an image that feeds contemporary democracy's leveling maw. Sen. McCain is not above us, this carefully crafted story tells us, he is not on the elevated level of those three sitting ducks in a row, the articulate, intellectually aloof, Ivy-educated politicians Al Gore, John Kerry and now Sen. Obama (that name! like having a Democratic candidate for president named Pruschev at the height of the Cold War). Sen. McCain is very much unlike Sen. Obama, whose equally crafted autobiography tells a tale of youthful indecision, wandering, mild drug use and eventual redemption as a privileged young man working among the poor and disenfranchised. Sen. McCain, however, started in a dark hole of startling setback, a place that is a more extreme echo of other, mundane places where so many people find themselves day to day. Sen. Obama still struggles with the sin of pride, he tells us with his confident grin and his air of perfect poise. You could be forgiven for thinking that he is proudly displaying his scorn for his own oversized pride. Sen. McCain, on the other hand, confesses, with his lean, Bogartian mouth set in a near-grimace, that "I've been an imperfect servant of my country for many years." And then he describes for us the gripping origins of his imperfection. Meanwhile, Professor Obama explains, eloquently and stirringly, the theoretical distinction between "ought" and "is." The difference between the destiny-battered Republican candidate and the issue-arrayed Democratic one is like the difference between a mass-market paperback and a college syllabus. The Republicans' cultural fluency has lately given them yet another advantage over the Democrats. For this season has given us the first truly postmodern election. Modern political campaigns are amalgams of politics, spectacle and entertainment. Postmodern campaigns teem with fluid identities, unmoored meanings and blurred boundaries to the point that stable terms like "politics," "spectacle" and "entertainment" barely exist as separate concepts. These innovations, if you will, are shifts in the culture, and the total submersion of politics in a cultural atmosphere is a trend perfectly suited to the party of organic culture. All the postmodern qualities are present and thriving. There is historical pastiche, as Sen. Obama gives us a shmear of JFK, a sprinkle of LBJ, a smidgen of FDR and dollops of MLK, and as Sen. McCain offers up a little Reagan here, some Nixon there and a bit of Truman everywhere. There is a kind of speeding relativity, as the candidates change long-held positions in a second, and even assimilate each other's positions. And there are fungible selves, as the two nominees respond almost hysterically to an illusion of majority opinions: a few right-wingers yell and McCain chooses a right-wing running mate to appease them (as if more than a relative handful of evangelicals were going to either vote for Obama or stay home and risk letting Obama win); a few Hillaryites scream and Obama decides not to choose a female running mate so as not to inflame them (as if more than a relative handful of disaffected Hillary supporters were either going to vote for McCain or stay home and risk letting McCain win). The most surprising development is the way the Republicans -- the party of Christian fundamentalists and of Allan Bloom's epigones -- have deftly adapted to the postmodern ambience. Both Obama and McCain are working the levers of the YouTube universe, Obama by telling his supporters that "This election is not about me. It's about you," and McCain by declaring that "I don't work for myself. I work for you." In this new, participatory culture, "you" has become a sort of generalized first person, and the first person -- of the ubiquitous memoirists, for example -- does the work of a particularized "you." Vicariousness, in other words, has become a universal principle. We love people who make it possible for us to imagine inhabiting their lives. This perhaps explains the rising distaste for leaders whose crowns are not made of thorns, whose realm of life we cannot imagine penetrating. In both those senses, Sarah Palin exerts a wide appeal to a certain type of voter. In this climate, what might seem to be Gov. Palin's blatant struggles with inadequacy serve as proof of her potential to lead. She wins the vicarious sweepstakes hands down. Every revelation of a seeming deficiency in her temperament, judgment or character offers a new avenue of access into her life. Then, too, the Republicans have, with Gov. Palin, made their acceptance of her shortcomings proof of their commitment to caring. All the abstract talk in the world about compassionate change cannot match an example of forgiveness in action. As for Obama the abstract talker, his autobiographical tales of triumph over ordinary human imperfection stick him with the appearance of being insufficiently imperfect to lead. It is bad enough for Sen. Obama that in his "complexity" he seems to bear the same relationship to action-hero, yet-no-dummy McCain that nuanced and complex Adlai Stevenson bore to action-hero, yet-no-dummy Eisenhower. Even worse, in Sen. Obama's elevated way of thinking and speaking, he cannot touch what seem to be the mean, petty, vindictive, narrow-minded hockey mom's achievements in the realm of sheer human messiness. To put it another way, the jangling twists and turns, contrasts, incongruities and outright contradictions in the team of McCain and Palin make them the perfect duo for our mega-distracted culture. (The P.O.W. factor meets the WOW factor.) Obama and Biden are like the warp and the woof of a traditional stereo system -- each one completes the other. Watching and listening to the Arizona senator and the Alaskan governor, side by side, or one after the other, is like listening to an iPod, instant messaging, watching TV and talking on your cellphone all at once. No, there is no culture war. There is only the Republicans' unilateral mastery of the cultural strategy. The Democrats consider any attention to the practices and prejudices of everyday living a mendacious diversion from the "issues," while the GOP, the party of the status quo, has proven itself astoundingly skillful at using its cultural antennae to adapt to new times. Who knew? The Republicans may or may not be the party that will effect change. But they are certainly the party that knows how to ride it. |
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I've already said I agree with much of the article, and have made my own list of double standards. If you want to avoid an actual argument fine, but don't pass the buck. |
Palin is being legally pursued for firing someone. I've heard very little and nothing mainstream linking Obama to corruption. "White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a “second look. " I think it's been made pretty clear (and you've made this point) that the former hillary supporters aren't really flocking to mccain/palin. c'mon, Rowlfe. these are all easy to pick apart. I don't want to go through all of them, so if you think any of them stand on their own legs, give me an example. |
and i have trouble believing you're defending it. if it was arguing a point for mccain, i think you'd be all over it for the weak sack of shit that it is. |
simply because the economy is going to overshadow culture. people are hurting now, and we're barely into the mess. the europe markets ate shit last night, the US markets ate shit today, and asian markets ate shit/are eating shit tonight. tomorrow is going to deepen the shit eating. we'll all be eating shit out of the firehose asshole of goatse before the week is up. and today's "the fundementals are strong" mccain is going to have to answer obama's big "WTF?" fuck abortions. people aren't going to be able to afford their TV bill. and that's really going to fuck up the NFL, NASCAR, and all the prime-time whatsafuck shows that middle-america women watch. |
You're just fighting with your dark side, Nate. |
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What if after Obama's major gaffes he had decided not to talk to the media until they agreed to show him deference? "all you have is examples of the same treatment we saw in kerry v. bush. kerry was a legit war vet, bush was a moneyed draft dodger, and yet that was all spun away by the republican media machine. white privilege?" Where's the negative stereotype that white people escape? Your example doesn't hold up. Most of Wise's deal with negative racial stereotypes. Well I'm wide awake. Guess I'm indulging: Par. 1 - Having an unwed pregnant teenage daughter would have different racial overtones and be viewed as a negative. Par 2 - Having a child that likes to kick ass and shoot things would have different racial overtones and be viewed as a negative. Par. 3 - Having a lacklustre, school trotting educational experience would have different racial overtones and be viewed as a negative. Obama HAS to basically be a Harvard genius, go even further than sufficient, and it's still largely ignored. Par. 4 - Is a better example of Republican hypocrisy the way Wise writes it, but is trying to say that white people can get away with being inexperienced. I'd say the case is inherently made by how quickly Palin has been accepted by the mainstream vs. Obama's long struggle to be taken seriously. Par. 5 - It's easier to get away with a constitutional ignorance, whereas if a black person is constitutionally correct, it has negative overtones because a black people protecting criminals = "looking after their own kind. you know, wink wink" Par 6. - A black gun enthusiast is not as... do I have to finish this sentence? Par. 7 - Again, as I'd mentioned, Michelle Obama has gone through hell over her patriotism, whereas Palin's separatist ties, even direct ones, are pretty much over being covered already and probably won't arise again. Easier to relate to. I'm sure Ron Paul supporters/half of Montana can relate to Todd Palin. Par. 8 - Community Organizer = Al Sharpton, joke of a job, troublemaker. Although Wise doesn't go there, I'd have said White Community Organizer = people think softball coach, Save The Hill Valley Clock Tower, wholesome Par. 9 - Identity politics is okay if you're a white woman. Obama was looked down on for winning so much of the black vote, even when he won Wyoming, Maine, Iowa, etc, etc.. and his supporters were considered mindless lemmings. Par. 10 - Corrupt white politician = run of the mill. Chicago politician = American Gangster. Par 11 - Religion. I've been over this. Par. 12 - Covered Par. 13 - The black persons struggle with racism is less deserving of sympathy or respect than those who've been through war. This paragraph is not so well written, but I get what he's trying to convey - that the struggle of black people to overcome adversity isn't respected enough. Obama is still treated like an affirmative action candidate. Par 14 - Only being an old white male with a young white woman has been able to prop up a campaign that can't win on the issues. I think Wise left out religion, which is bumping them up now as much as anything. And if thats cynical, well McCains own campaign advisors says the campaign is about personalities, not issues. Could you rewrite a lot of the article to be specifically about Democrat vs. Republican double standards? Sure, but Wise for the most part addresses the disadvantages Obama faces as the black candidate. |
if you've never heard of Tony Rezko, you haven't been paying attention. And Obama's been pretty much cleared, and yet Rezko has had umpteen times more attention than the press has brought up the fucking Keating Five. "I think it's been made pretty clear (and you've made this point) that the former hillary supporters aren't really flocking to mccain/palin. " The Hillary supporters aren't, but new polls show McCain leading white women overall. Independents/people who weren't otherwise voting I suppose? "if it was arguing a point for mccain, i think you'd be all over it for the weak sack of shit that it is." Try me. There are absolutely some cases where Palin would be asked certain things Obama would not. We've already gone through this about Obama not being asked to leave his kids at home. I replied that he actually did face some shit, and that I have some big problems with Palin's specific case, but theres certainly an overall point there. |
But the first one was pretty good: 'White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you, or your parents, because “every family has challenges,” even as black and Latino families with similar “challenges” are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.' And the second one wasn't bad either: 'White privilege is when you can call yourself a “fuckin’ redneck,” like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, who likes to “kick ass” if people mess with you, and who likes to “shoot shit,” for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.' I mean, truly, would you ever hear a right wing talking head defending a black man who says they like to "kick ass" and "shoot shit"? Nope. Of course, Wise starts out with good points and then goes too far, like any rhetorician would. But that doesn't make every point bullshit and it's intellectual laziness to make that assertion. |
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Even though i already sort of have it. |
Here's some information on the book Palin wanted to remove from the library |
http://www.isecureonline.com/Reports/OST/WOSTJ912/?o=1553812&u=41113700&l=1590648&g=4919 gotta love it. |
You can read everything in Danielssss' link by only reading the bold black headings. |
a harvard genius? that's almost negative credentials when you get through the right wing spin machine. the fact that negatives are spun positive when they show up in republicanland isn't surprising nor is it evidence of racism. it is business as usual. same thing that happened with black kerry and black gore. really, when it comes down to it, wise is acting as the racist. he sees a black man against a white man and figures that the tactics the white man is using are based on race. even when the tactics are the same tactics the white man used last time he went up against a white man. the only races involved here are elephants and donkeys. |
See, you've lost. You've muddled white privilege with racism, and you've lost. This whole thing is about what you can get away with, how your negatives can be minimised and rationalized by the empathy of most of the voters/media sharing your race, and you're turning it into machiavellan "Oooh them evil racist liberals" bullshit. |
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can you quantify this amplification? my point is that you pull race out of it and you still have the same thing. because you do. people see a racial issue because they want to. but if obama was a white dude, we'd see the same plays by the right and to the same level of effect. |
Yes, because we all know that people didn't vote for John Kerry becasuse he was a secret Muslim too. No, white privilege and racism are absolutely not mutually exclusive terms, and I say 'you've lost' because you have treated them as such and tried to even turn it around on Wise for daring see racism at all. You and I can benefit from white privilege in any number of cases without saying or doing anything negative at all - socially, economically, politically, and trivially. Acting as if racism and sexism have had no effect on the campaign beyond the typical Dem/Rep bullshit... is simply absurd. |
"if obama was a white dude, we'd see the same plays by the right and to the same level of effect." Nate was for recognizing racial double standards before he was against it. |
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"we'd see the same plays by the right and to the same level of effect." http://blogs.tnr.com/tnr/blogs/the_plank/archive/2008/09/15/i-just-got-push-polled-on-obama-and-israel.aspx#comments Can you honestly say that having black skin and being named Barack Hussein Obama doesn't amplify the effectiveness of these kinds of push polls? |
and what i said up there about canadian politics really just had to with wanting to hear more about canada. canadians always complain - rightly - that we don't pay attention to their country, and yet when they post here it virtually doesn't exist. i remember a while back - i hope i'm remembering this correctly - wisper had taken a trip to mexico. she had a layover in florida (miami?) and got to walk around the city. i remember her saying something like "i've never seen so many black people in one place!" of course it wasn't racist it seemed more like an almost child-like fascination. she was quick to point out that there *are* black people in canada: just apparently not that many where she lives. is that what it's like for you, rowlfe? maybe where you work there are a couple of black guys who seem really nice, just as nice as the white folks. any more than that and you'd have to take the "black canada" bus tour? or, as an artist and political agitator, do you live in a garrett somewhere steeped in the minority and outsider fringe of canada. by the way, remind me of where in canada you live. |
fuckin a. people have lost their minds. |
I can honestly say that those kinds of push polls are perpetuated by the natural enemies of the aryan nation and other neo-nazi organizations. wise isn't arguing the existence of white privilege. he's giving examples of it. and the examples are bullshit. i went to a school where their admissions process involves assigning points for various aspects of your application (your test scores, your grades, your outside experience.) you could get points for being black. clear evidence of black privilege. right? no, bullshit. but more logical than the wise bullshit. is a white dude with a gun less scary for the average white american than a black dude with a gun? for most cases, absolutely. is that a sign of white privilege? maybe? it is certainly a sign of cultural prejudices. it is a sign that the media makes us fear black people. (though every time a worker goes batshit and shoots up an office around here, it's a white dude.) does that apply to the political process? no. is obama at a disadvantage because he's black? definitely. are there people on the fence because obama is black? probably not. if you have a problem with black people, it is probably a deal-breaker from the beginning, don't you think? it isn't like anyone is going to say, well, he is black but i like his policies, but, oh my god, his daughter is dating a dude who likes to kick ass and shoot shit? no fucking way am i going to vote for a BLACK guy whose daughter is dating a dude who likes to kick ass and shoot shit. now, if he was a good white boy, sure. but being black, that's just too many strikes against. |
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They're just "the right kind of people," you know? |
but none of that shit in the op/ed is an example of white privilege. which is why i haven't answered all of rowlfe's points. because the spin works against white people if those white people are democrats (see, kerry, gore). it is a cultural bias that cannot be simplified down to white privilege. clearly and obviously. absurdly so. i mean, seriously, part of the cultural bias is against educated white people. or, as you know, the beneficiaries of white privilege. and the simple fact is that associating the tactics of the republicans with white privilege just strengthens the republican base. polarizes them. because most of them don't think of themselves as racist. don't want to think of themselves as racist. and yet there you go, another ivory tower liberal pointing fingers at the plebes. |
Okay, god, how do i even approach this? I'll try. Both me and Rowlfe live (together) in a suburb of Toronto and we work in Toronto. Toronto is the most ethnically diverse city in the world, a source of great pride all around. 43% of Toronto's population is not white, 49% was born outside Canada. It's like spunky's nightmare up here. Now you have to understand 2 things about my wonderment at seeing so many black people at once: Number one- black people are not the predominant minority in Canada. They are #3. There are much more Asian and Indian (that's people from India) people than black people. That's just the way it is all over. To see a huge crowd including tons of black people was indeed strange for me. To see a huge crowd with shitloads of Asian or Indian people would not seem odd. In fact, the LACK of Asian and Indian people around Miami really freaked me out. Really told me that i was not at home. I don't think i saw a single person wearing a turban or a sari the entire time i was in Miami, and that was weird. That's just what i'm so very used to. I'm used to a friggen rainbow of diversity up in here, the shocking Miami crowd was starkly black & white. Number two- we do not have ghettos like you do, and poor areas are filled with immigrants (mostly from India or China or Pakistan), not black people. When i think of a poor neighborhood, when i think of poverty in a city the people i imagine are Indian. Not black. My image of poverty is not a black single mother with 6 kids or whatever the stereotype would be in america, but a very old woman wearing traditional salwar-kameez. These are the people that would buy all their groceries at the dollar store when i used to work in one. We have SO MANY immigrants. Immigration is the only way our population increases. Like the rest of the western world (with the single strange exclusion of the USA) settled citizens have long since stopped having children. And black people, at this point, are generally not immigrants. They've been here for a long time. It's not a big thing. They are spread out everywhere. They have been fully free here since the 1800's. But ANYWAY! Soon the immigrants, that is Asians and Indians, will outnumber both the white and black people of Canada. And that's how it is in Canada, droop. Just not as many black people as anywhere down there. At least not at once. (Oh, but the natives. See how i'm not even mentioning the natives? Eeeeeeyeah. Someone in Germany once asked me why most every Canadian she's ever talked to, even seemingly normal and sane ones, turned into a crazy racist on the topic of natives. They catch most of the bigotry and racist negative stereotyping, much like black people do in the states :[ ) In closing- there are many interesting things about Canada. The government is just not one of them. |
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The title of this thread typifies that. |
And you're so deep in it you can't see out. |
maybe i am, maybe i'm not, tiggy. how would i know? i'm clearly an ineffective communicator. |
Look at the West Virginia primary. Did Hillary really win 70 - 30% solely on her own merits? Really? You think so? Hillary is a rich intellectual white woman. I suppose WV is full of latte drinking limosine drinking ivory tower liberals that came out for her? Privilege is defined as "a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most" - it most definitely applies to most of the op ed points and transcends typical partisan bullshit. You can go through that same article and replace Palin's church with Hillary and the Family, talk about Hillary's out of the blue gun stories in Pennsylvania, and so on where it fits, and the points still stand. Hillary benefited from white privilege at several points during her campaign as well, and did indeed at other parts face a disadvantage due to sexism at others. As I've stated earlier, in some primaries Obama benefited from being black/personality politics. And at other times racial and gender politics were played up where none existed. It's not about what makes people feel guilty or comfortable, its' about addressing reality. You said: "are there people on the fence because obama is black? probably not." when I saw man on the street interview after interview in Pennsylvania with people saying they like Obama but couldnt vote for "a Muslim", Mexicans in Texas who said they felt racial tensions with black people, uncomfortable voting for one, that they are a step below them in the food chain. Obama even brought this up in many interviews where saying he had to talk with black groups about how they need to get over their own prejudices. Prejucides and political benefit go hand in hand, are directly linked to many of the double standards we've seen, and the personality politics that can put states in or out of play. I hope this is the last thing I have to say on this thread, even though you're not likely to give in when you're this deep in. This thread starts off by pointing fingers at liberals, and then comes to a point with you getting mad at liberals pointing fingers. Scorn the 'ivory tower', pity the 'plebes'. Tig is right, prejudice indeed. |
In addition to WV, Tennessee, Arkansas (all 3 among the 10 poorest states) and the vast majority of rural areas in every primary went Hillary. No racial prejucides, no benefit or privilege to being white whatsoever, and those that disagree are apparently the REAL racists |
nope. i think a lot of people in west virginia can't stomach voting for a black person. "You said: "are there people on the fence because obama is black? probably not." when I saw man on the street interview after interview in Pennsylvania with people saying they like Obama but couldnt vote for "a Muslim", Mexicans in Texas who said they felt racial tensions with black people, uncomfortable voting for one, that they are a step below them in the food chain." they're not on the fence, are they. when you say you can't vote for someone because they're muslim, or you won't vote for a black, you're not on the fence. you've made your decision. when race is an issue, it's a big issue. it isn't something you can kind of offset. i definitely don't pity the plebes. i'm pissed off that this country is being run by the idiots. the ivory tower is the perception of middle america. they're the ones that are going to elect the next president. neither you nor tiggy are responding to what i'm saying. i think you just like to be contra-nate. whatever i say. this country is sucking ass. i don't want these people in power. another four years of bush doctrine? jesus christ. i definitely have a problem with a subset of liberals. they're typically affluent, educated, short sighted, and think they know what is right for everyone. they are part of the reason why bush won two terms. them and diebold. that wise piece is awesome if you're a mccain supporter. it does obama no good. obama is a great candidate. even with racism and the backlash against the liberal elite, obama is neck and neck with the good ol' boy. if you look state by state at the electoral college, obama is out in the lead. that's how great he is. so now we just need the donkeys to not fuck this shit up. |
God, you're such a liberal elitist! :) Daily tracking polls a trending back towards Obama. It's the economy, stupid. |
i'm a total liberal elitist. |
None of these words has ever described you ever, right? Get out of your ivory tower! :) "i think you just like to be contra-nate." It's non-Nate privilege. |
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spunky's nightmare would be where i live: 20% black and 30% latino. by the way, i just saw this in a canadian newspaper: "canada's health care fares poorly compared to western europe." guess i'm going to have to move to europe instead. |
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you ever go skiing? |
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Anyway, those of us on the right fear an Obamma presidency as much as those on the left fear a McCain presidency. No matter who wins, the winners will crow, and the losers will cry. And, in four years we will go through the whole thing again. It will be just as nasty as it always has been the Republicans will be calling the Dems names. And, the Demacrats will be using even worse names for the Republicans. I know the liberals out there will disagree with the above statement. But, I'd be willing to put a meager bet that if you compared transcripts you'd find that true. At least the voter fraud is not as bad as it used to be. It has been speculated that Edgar Allen Poe died because of being drugged and taken to the polls several times before he was found incoherant in our Baltimore streets. And we absolutley can't forget all the old time political bosses from the past. The new ones aren't as obvious. Still, how many people residing in our cemetaries and illegal alliens will vote this year. |
but then, who isn't fuck it, you get a little extra |
That's a crowd of 100,000 people who came out to hear Barack Obama in St. Louis. Not a typo. One Hundred Thousand People. |
In Canada, Obama could be a member of the Conservative or Liberal party. He's pretty much centrist, but now McCain is calling him a socialist. A socialist! Sorry, but thats laughable. I know socialists, Mr. McCain, many socialists are good friends of mine, and Obama sir, is no socialist. John McCain has hired the same firm that smeared him in 2000. That's where he's at. If you think Obama and liberals are the ones being more mean here, when video after video every day outside McCain rallies has more than the average share of kooks in line spouting racial epiphets and calling him a terrorist, yeah, I'll take your bet. Show me Watcher. Show me. I doubt you can or will, I mean you wouldn't even follow up on your claim that Sarah Palin is more qualified than Obama. and yes, if you do still believe both of these claims, heather is right - you are a fool. |
I go to the polls on Monday to vote early. Fuck lot of good it'll do in Texas, but at least we can claim the county for Obama. Believe it or not, in the last two presidential elections Dallas county went Democrat. The pic of the Obama rally reminds me of the 100K strong immigration march in downtown Dallas in 2006. It was then that I had a glimmer of hope that a Democrat would be elected in '08. There was a booth there for registering voters run by the local Democrats, but no similar booth from the Republicans. It was then I knew the tide had turned. |
hey Watcher, I'd take this more seriously than name calling. |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbbcVNOMqSk |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQalRPQ8stI |
i didn't appreciate america until i lost it |
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You know, it's exactly how everyone used to vote before all these new fangled machines. |
But oh my god will i fight against this. Ohhhh mercy. |
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our early voting is with the new fangled machines. i'm voting tomorrow morning. you know you live in texas when you vote for a guy named Larry Joe. |
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can there not be both is my question? i rarely sign petitions and i signed to get this on the ballot but now im questioning whether its really the solution or just another matter that will needs its own prop to fix 10 years from now |
The whole thing about poultry disease is a big fat lie perpetrated by the industry, not an actual fact. And prop two isn't for cage-free housing, it's for larger cages. Even after prop two, Europe still has roomier cage standards, and they obviously aren't dealing with a bird flu epidemic. |
my thing is this....i will actually support the measure regardless more as a knock at the massive industrial food complex. fine, if we have to pay more for quality, then we pay more. if eggs become two expensive to eat, well then shit, maybe we should re-evaluate whom we get our eggs from and it could force our buying patterns to shorten up our food chain. worse case scenario, i'll get a couple of fucking hens myself. i'll have the room for them. but then again this is a california prop, not an NC one. |
Chickens are fun to have around, I would highly recommend them. Or ducks. |
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the chickens on the bottom spend their lives eating shit. quite literally. tofu and chicken. evils. beef and pork is where it is at. |
but since you're voting, make sure you vote no on 4. |
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Oh yeah. And let's not forget that caged birds need more antibiotics to cope with the tight space/shit they are eating/rampant infections caused by poor debeaking and having their feet grow through/around the wires in their enclosures, so caged birds breed all kinds of exciting antibiotic-resistant bacteria. |
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chickens are kinda nasty birds. a friend here in la, she works with pigs for film/tv has a couple of hens for eggs. she showed me how to hypnotize a chicken once. while holding one the seem to shit non-stop and its all over their feathers. gross little fuckers. we entertained the idea of getting a goat. you know so chloe could herd and we could cheese it up. the child thinks we're out of our minds for such a thought. |
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http://www.kentuckyfriedcruelty.com/ |
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these appear to be english words organized into a sentence! |
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Obama's Loss Traced To Sarah Cross. oooops, sorry America. |
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First there is the Fast and Furious guns to the Mexican cartels. Then we have the Bengazzie ( I know I can't spell it) massacre of our Libyan Ambassador and two former Seals who may have been there to offer arms to the Syrian rebels. Now we have the IRS who were admittedly targeting Tea Party groups for harassment during the last election year. Oh, and the head of that department is going to take the 5th when testifying to Congress. I can't wait for what's next. |
