College in Hawaii... wish I'd have thought of that. :D

All of these ridiculous charges and attacks against Palin are going to help insulate her if something serious does comes out. One day the press will cry wolf and people will just shrug.

And, why do we care that the Mascot of Idaho was the Vandals? Are they trying to tie her to some kind of lawless youth group? Or are they implying that she went to a racist school that ridiculed a 5th century germanic tribe by having it as a mascot? :-)
-Jut

Any reasonable person would think that Sarah Palin in 2008 is a bright and well spoken person. They might not agree with her political views but trying to slam her intelligence and what she has accomplished is nothing short of sour grapes.

What Democrat pundits don't seem to realize is that such so-called "fact pieces" don't have the effect on Moderates and Republicans that they do on hard core Democrats. Rather than diminishing Palin, they make people more sympathetic to her.

And anyone with an education belittling someone with less eduction solely makes the attacker look like an insecure asshole.

And anyone who chooses a career in public service belittling someone for once being a "community organizer" makes the attacker look like an insecure asshole.

Amen, who cares. Less on her personal life, more on her politics. There's plenty there to rip on. Why focus on this petty crap?

And anyone who chooses a career in public service belittling someone for once being a "community organizer" makes the attacker look like an insecure asshole.

I guess belittling someone for once being the mayor of a small town makes the attacker look like a statesman.

The media and the libs don't have much to shoot at so they invariably form a circular firing squad and commence.

And anyone who chooses a career in public service belittling someone for once being a "community organizer" makes the attacker look like an insecure asshole. (Amanda)

No one "belittled" anyone about being a community organizer. But when comparing a Governor and a community organizer, the former is a much more impressive qualification.

And when you're a community organizer, it's generally a good idea that the community you organized with the taxpayer's money doesn't turn into a decrepit and decaying shithole.

Oh, was that racist of me to say?

Bad brian.....actually, I am laughing my A** off.

It certainly is the truth. I live in Chicago, and honestly, he didn't do a thing that made a difference.

Lets see...she changed schools 6 times in 6 years....couldn't make up her mind...

Obama voted "Present" over 120 times in 7 years...that breaks down to over 17 times a year. Please explain to me how that is being committed to "Change". Sounds like he wouldn't commit to taking a stance, and politics as usual. Quite a few of those votes were at the direction of senior Democrats. I guess that means we can look forward to Nancy Pelosi actually running the white house shortly.

Give Palin her due, she isn't afraid to stand up to other republicans, and tell them to shut it.

thank you....rant over

Triumph visits the RNC Convention.

Jeff, you have a point. Guiliani and Palin said "community organizer", smiled and chuckled and let the audience make their own conclusions. It seemed snarky to me.

An index of Palin's sins.

"And anyone who chooses a career in public service belittling someone for once being a "community organizer" makes the attacker look like an insecure asshole."

They dems started it with the "mayor of tiny town, only Governor of Alaska, not experienced enough for VP" lines. She and other repubs are merely pointing out his own steller lack of experience. He hasn't done crap, but wants us to believe he will, once voted in, commence to do lots of crap. Crap, unfortunately, is exactly what it will be.

Who gives a rats ass where she went? She went. And probably got better grades than most of the recent previous presidents and vp's.

I went to 3 colleges. 4, if you count post-grad work. So what? Are shitty grades at Ivy League schools somehow better than average or good grades at a state school? I doubt it. So who exactly is it that's out of touch with the common man? The girl who went to school among them, or the salf-proclaimed Mesiah in his ivory tower?

> Are shitty grades at Ivy League
> schools somehow better than
> average or good grades at a
> state school?

Hey, where's Marion? We have unfinished business here.....

Ok, so governor of Alaska for 20 months beats being a community organizer for 3 years. Does it also beat being in the Illinois Senate for 8 years, and the US Senate for 2? The man sponsored 800 bills during his terms in Illinois. You may not agree with their content (although many do), but surely it's nice to at least be able to judge from his past actions what kind of politician he is and what opinions he holds. http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2007/07/29/us/politics/20070730_OBAMA_GRAPHIC.html

I can't believe anyone would belittle a person for leaving a position as a New York financial consultant to do public service work in Chicago ghettos for $10,000 a year. Particularly the supposed family values party. Does working for the poor not qualify as a family value anymore? Or is that restricted to maximizing the number of babies you pop out?

I don't care how many schools Palin attended. But I don't think she has much experience, either.

I thought the "I told Congress no, thank you to the bridge to nowhere" story was interesting, though.

Demand creates supply, the old economic adage that many seem to forget. The AP is simply giving Joe & Mary Six-Pack exactly what they are looking for in the their fox for daily news - "trash".

It is interesting to see just how long this love/hate fest with Palin concerning the media keeps its steam going. I almost get the feeling that SHE has received the Presidential nomination, not McCain.

I think I will keep my "indifferent" claim going for as the long haul :-)

Ian

Are shitty grades at Ivy League schools somehow better than average or good grades at a state school?

No, unless you're comparing someone who double-majored in chemistry and physics at the Ivy League school with someone who majored in community organizing at the state school, or the functional equivalent. The difference is that no one looks past the "Yale," "Stanford" or "Harvard" on that line in your resume (unless you follow it with something like "summa" or "magna"), so, unless your grades were truly abysmal, your GPA typically won't matter all that much post-school unless you're trying to get into grad school. As we non-science-majors used to say, the hardest part was getting in. That having been said, grade inflation is a very real issue. That "gentleman's C" that Dubya got at Yale is probably functionally equivalent to a B/B+ student at an Ivy today.

I wonder what Palin's likeability ratings would be today if the NYTimes had written multiple front-page stories about her views on the environment rather than on the state of the uterus of her teenage daughter. At this point, I think the situation around Palin has gotten like the one around Clinton back in 1992 - so many half-truths and small quasi-scandals have come out that people have gotten overwhelmed. Unless something ENORMOUS comes out - i.e. a video proven to be of Palin shows her talking admiringly about communism and making awful racist statements - I think most people who don't flat-out hate her are going to tune out the drip drip drip of "scandals." Amy and I had the exact same response to this particular "scandal."

Laura says no.

Katie:

I can't believe anyone would belittle a person for leaving a position as a New York financial consultant to do public service work in Chicago ghettos for $10,000 a year. Particularly the supposed family values party. Does working for the poor not qualify as a family value anymore? Or is that restricted to maximizing the number of babies you pop out?

Obama didn't leave to do public service work. He went to TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PEOPLE.

He took money from government, and gave it to influential developers to manage projects that they abandoned.

Those same influential developers had friends in high places that saw potential in Obama, and he wound up in politics. The only reason he wound up in the senate in Illinois is because he was valuable to someone else's power.

Real people were hurt by Obama's ambition. Just because he "meant well" doesn't mean he gets a pass for fucking up.

Oh, really, Obama's ambition hurt real people? Obama's? Because he was unable to single-handedly rescue Chicago from the post-steel era? How many people have died in Iraq in the last FIVE YEARS we've occupied it?! Yet you're ready to give McCain and the rest of the Republican party a get-out-of-jail-free card and four more years of power? Unbelievable.

Katie -

How many people did Saddam kill in the past three years. That's right. None.

How many dollars did Iraq's government funnel to families of suicide bombers in "Palestine" in the past three years? None.

Obama's ambition was to be powerful. He became powerful. He did so at the expense of the "community" he claimed to be "organizing" on behalf of. In all his time in power in Illinois, did the crime rate drop? Did the murder rate drop? No. Why? Because people like Obama don't give a flying fuck about the citizens they rule over.

You want to know if I am ready to give McCain a "get out of jail free card"? Yes. Because I don't think they did a damn thing wrong. I'm sorry that you don't believe that we are in an existential struggle with expansionist political Islam, and that there are governments in this world that think they can dance with that particular devil and come out unburned.

But you want me to hand the reins of power over to a man who thinks he can negotiate with Ahmadinejad? You're out of your flipping mind.

I don't think being a community organizer makes one an agent of evil or anything, but I do think it's somewhat less relevant in terms of preparing one for a high-level political office than, say, a low-level political office is at preparing one for a high-level political office. Given that the Obama campaign - not just the Krazy Kos Kids, but the official campaign - had repeatedly mocked Palin's mayorship as somehow making her less qualified for the presidency, I think she was allowed a shot at the "community organizer" thing.

Also, one thing I forgot to add before: An Ivy League degree should not be seen as an asset for someone seeking higher office. There's a reason that most CEOs didn't graduate from the "top" schools. The Ivies tend to produce a lot of very bright people who have issues with the whole common sense thing. William F. Buckley (another Ivyite) was right on this one. This is not to say that everyone who has ever graduated from an Ivy League school (or the equivalent) is impractical, but I'd start with the assumption that they are and seek for proof that they're not rather than the other way around. My Ivy degree is not the only reason I'd make an awful president, but you can consider that the initial clue.

> the Obama campaign - not just the
> Krazy Kos Kids, but the official
> campaign - had repeatedly mocked
> Palin's mayorship

Oh yes, and they're toying with dynamite. What follows is a scenario that's playing out a hundred thousand times here in September 2008, probably in a home near yours.

Liberals & Democrats gather. They cluster in packs of seven, or at tables of five, in mutually-affirming groupings of sustainable social affirmation. Each holds a glass of white wine... At least two people in each group have the good sense not to drink it, but it's rude to say no when it's offered, y'know?

So they start talking about current events. Somebody points out that there were no sunspots last month, and someone else says that's probably because of global warming, and a third person says it's probably because of the gas that gets used up at NASCAR races. Everyone murmurs assent.

Someone talks about the nightmare in Iraq, a misbegotten military enterprise if ever there was one. Everyone murmurs assent.

Someone talks about how Senator Squeaky McCain's experience in Viet Nam got too much play at the convention, and everyone murmurs assent.

And then a guy says something, anything, about that woman. (It doesn't matter what it is, either. It could be the hair, the hunting, the grandchild, the retarded baby, the small town, the PTA, anything.) And everyone murmurs assent...

Except for one person, a woman seated at the north end of the table. She doesn't say anything or make any unusual eye contact with the other liberals as the moment passes. But the guy who said the thing about Palin... and it was nothing special or vicious, really, just an aside, something obvious that all of us agree about anyway... Well, he saw the lady at the north jerk her head really fast there for second. Only a fraction of an inch. He doesn't know what it means, and suddenly he's worried that there are a lot of forces at work that he's not aware of.

We call this "fear."

There's going to be bunch of it. How many men on the left will suddenly be able talk about this with the kind of precision required?

No way. Liberals are all about rote thinking and bitterness. Keep watching the papers, keep watching the news. You're going to see some really big stumbles in next seven weeks.

(Certain more than from the Republicans with Ferraro in 1984... I remember none.)

Brian, people are dead no matter if they're killed by a bloodthirsty dictator or a suicide bomb at a checkpoint or by American mercenaries. Dead is dead, and it appears we saved no lives at all, plus tossed our own soldiers onto the pile.

If we are in an existential struggle with expansionist political Islam- and no I'm not convinced-, does that seem to you like a war that will be won by disrupting secular dictatorships that were keeping political Islam and tribal war in check? All we did was create a power vacuum that Iran and Al Qaeda are too happy to fill. Since you've acknowledged before that invading and toppling the Iranian government is "stupid", and years of sanctions have only unified Iranians against us, and negotiating with terrorists is for pussies, what do you think we should do? War would be suicidal, sanctions aren't working, I think negotiation is in order. McCain's not enough of a diplomat. Enough with the swaggering cowboys already.

Great. What will you negotiate? What, or who, will you concede?

We hand Iraq to the Iraqis (and not just our selected puppets, who aren't going to last anyway) and finish what we started in Afghanistan, so that Afghan refugees can return from Iran and opium stops coming in. In return they dismantle their nuclear program and stay inside their own borders.

Which Iraqis get the keys? They don't even have tax rolls... If you decided to give them their own oil money, how exactly would you go about it? (PS- Are we gonna cut the Kurds loose again?)

What exactly did we "start" in Afghanistan? Are we going to have to turn a huge regions with zero natural resources (and few human ones) into a modern state? Kabul has three million people no plumbing. Did we get into it over there with any intention other than diminishing the hospitality of its warlords to millionaire terrorists from Saud?

Isn't it the case that Iran, an autocratic state rather than a free-market one, really needs nuclear power, since they don't have the wherewithal to build oil refineries? Beyond the weapons potential from nukes, is their energy policy any of our beeswax?

(For the first time today, I remembered to close the HTML markup on the italics, and want credit for that)

Katie - You are clearly not thinking straight on this issue. I'm not sure if it's an age thing, or an emotion thing (I suspect the emotion thing, since you decided to refer to soldiers as "mercenaries" which is a hella loaded word.) You think Iran will be talked out of their nuclear program. Isn't that cute?

Let me be as clear as I can be.

We have been at war with the government of Iran since 1979, but nobody has declared it.

The purpose of invading Iraq was to make the mullahs vulnerable and let the Iranian people (who do not hate us, by the way) know that we aren't going to abandon them again like we did in 1991.

Once Iraq is a stable self-governed nation, they will be less susceptible to the charms of theocracy. Ask the Islamist party how things are working out for them in Ankara (hint: not well).

There have been anti-government protests in Iran with a startling regularity, and they aren't being put down with nearly the force that was once used. You'll note that Iran is now completely surrounded by America and American influences. Once the mullahs crack and Iran is no longer a theocracy, they aren't a threat any more.

We win the war that Khomeini started without firing a single shot. It just took 30 years, is all.

I'm going to bed but just had to clear this up-

No, I am not referring to our soldiers as mercenaries, I am referring to our mercenaries (Blackwater et al) as mercenaries. Although it is true that Iraqis killed by an American soldier vs Sadaam's henchmen are equally dead, as well. Bombing Iran out of their nuclear program is not practical or ethical, so that leaves talking.

> Iraqis killed by an American
> soldier vs Sadaam's henchmen
> are equally dead

Some deaths are worth more than other.

I was kinda OK with taking out Osirak.

Bombing Iran out of their nuclear program is not practical or ethical, so that leaves talking.

We have nothing to talk about with Iran. So it leaves subterfuge. Isolate Iran, and destroy the regime from within.

See, negotiation is not about one side unilaterally giving in to the other. It's about compromise.

And on the issue of Iran having atomic weapons, there is nothing to compromise. They don't get to have them because we said so. There's nothing to discuss.

The only thing that could change our mind is their disarmament. They will not disarm until all the Jews are dead. We aren't going to kill all the Jews, and we aren't going to let them kill all the Jews, so there's nothing to negotiate over. Q.E.D.

And at this moment, we are the only thing standing between Israel and the very violent end of Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Screw Israel, they have the bomb lrt them use it if they think they need to. And quite frankly they manage to do quite well securing the security of their people.

They dont have a peice of shit smoke and mirrors show like the TSA to annoy their public becuase they take security seriously.

luj -

it is our "financial assistance" that is PREVENTING Israel from doing just that.

I'm not sure that leaving the middle east a smoking radioactive ruin is necessarily in everyone's interest.

I don't know that Iran is on the verge of overthrowing their government- this survey of Iranians that asked them their feelings towards their government found that a majority feel it is very important to live in a democratic country, and that they indeed feel their government is representative of the people.

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brmiddleeastnafricara/379.php?lb=brme&pnt=379&nid=&id=

This doesn't sound like a country on the verge of another revolution to me. Hell, there are anti-government protests here too... because it's a democracy and people have the right to assemble!

Katie - Up until about 6 months ago, protesting against the regime in Iran was a death-penalty offense. Reform candidates were routinely removed from ballots. Pro-reform protesters were routinely 'disappeared'.

That's not happening now.

Unless we do something very stupid, the mullocracy in Iran is coming to an end.

But, you don't want to believe that because you've bought into (1) the media lies about Iran being a fount of anti-Americanism that is a perfect representative democracy, and (2) the idea that Bush and McCain are hell-bent on war because they get off on killing people.

You are dangerously misinformed about world events. I thought I was behind the curve, but you make me look like Encyclopaedia Fucking Britannica.

Please. Do us all a favor. Stay home on November 4.

Just be grateful I'm not running for VP. Although I do live kind of near Canada... at least I have that under my belt.

Read the link, Katie, and was not charmed. So criminals and immigrants get an education I was deprived on my tax dollar? I am so sick of other people getting shit I can't out of my hide. He wants to educate people all because they did something wrong (juvenile delinquents) or come from somewhere else (immigrants). Not thrilled with McCain but Obama's worse. And they both want to fucking shove Christ down my throat.

T's Grammy....don't forget they get to have health care at our expense as well...break the law...we will take care of all your needs. It's both sad and pathetic that politicians are unwilling to look out for law abiding Americans before anyone else.

And they both want to fucking shove Christ down my throat.

That's a lie and you know it.

You aren't interested in the First Amendment's protection of religious freedom, nor the establishment clause.

You think the First Amendment grants you freedom from religion, such that you should never have to be exposed to it ever in your daily life, and especially from anyone in government.

Sorry, you don't get to dictate that. Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test when considering fitness for office.

I know its kind of late but I think it's worth mentioning that the UofI (University of Idaho) is not considers Idaho's flagship school by anyone actually living in Idaho. Ever heard of the "smurf turf"? Even before our football team started kicking ass it was better to be a Bronco than a Vandal. But thats just an option from an Idaho girl and it certianly doesn't reflect one bit on Paulin.