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Hold on a second: Voting FOR Obama essentially because he's black is not the same as/equal to refusing to vote for him essentially because he's black.

People who believe that having any "black" person as president, despite the fact that Obama is pretty well meaning, smart and far more qualified to be president than several other actual presidents (such as the current bozo) will harm the country are wrong. I don't know what exactly they think will be so terrible, but generally, keeping "black" people "down" isn't making America better. We look at conservative Muslim countries and shake our heads because they deny themselves the talents and potential of half their population (women). The US suffers because we don't give equal opportunities to a good chunk of our own population based on "race".

People who believe that having a "black" president will make America better are, for the most part, right. Currently most of 1/8th of our population operate with the (often unconscious) knowledge that there really are levels of success that are barred to them. And probably 60 to 70% of the US population operate with the assumption that there is roughly 20% of the population that will never and can never do things like be president. Not that being president of the US is the highest achievement (I'd say that MLK, Gandhi, and several medical researchers have done more for humanity than any president), but it's critical that we know that ALL Americans have roughly equal opportunities.

The two positions are simply not equivalent.

And the same goes for the day when America has a (reasonably well qualified) woman president. The "glass ceiling" is still very real, despite it being pushed upwards.

Also, to clarify, voting for Obama, in part, because he is "black" is not the same as voting for someone because he/she is "your" group, when "your" group is pretty well entrenched in the power structure. For instance, I'm "half Irish", but voting for a politician in Chicago because he's Irish doesn't make any difference in overcoming prejudice - Irish Americans have "arrived" - see: Mayor Daley, Mayor Daley, Presidnet Kennedy, numerous CEOs, etc. "Black" Americans are not currently in the same position. (One hundred years ago, that was a very different story for Irish in America...)

At the same time, there are things like "plantation politics" - in the "bad old days" of Chicago politics under the first Mayor Daley, there were "black" aldermen who got elected because they were from a "black" neighborhood, but "served the master" - the mayor, to the detriment of their own communities. I think it's pretty clear, though, that Obama isn't just "a tool of the machine." He has the potential to be one of America's great presidents.

pigsteak wrote:I don't really buy the whole "you must be ivy league" to serve mentality. It smacks of elitist up and down. Nor do I subscibe to the "if you have ghosts in your closet", we'll call you out mentality. Many honorable people probably refuse to get into politics because of the jaded way it is seen.

Right - not just the Ivy League - there's MIT, U of Chicago, UCBerkley, Stanford and CalTech which would also automatically make one "highly qualified"!

But seriously - you're right about the "ghosts in the closet thing." Another great thing if Obama gets elected would be breaking the "admitting to doing drugs means you'll never be president." Maybe El Shrubbo's coke use is dong America some good.

I honestly thought, and still do, that Obama was going to try a "new style" in DC. And I also gave McCain that same benefit. But with Biden, Obama hooked his horse to a lifer, and took away his most important attack tool on Mccain. With Palin, McCain took away his biggest fighting tool against Obama (inexperience).

Obama picking Biden really is a step (or three) backwards on that count - Biden's "service for" the credit card industry is pretty lame. But Obama will still be president - this won't be a "Cheney in Charge" situation. McCain, on the other hand, threw away about two decades of pseudo-"Maverick" credit with the positions he's switched to for this election. That's a lot more of a disappointment and a problem.

For folks who don't get MoveOn.org stuff, here's their current "insane rantings" that are the mirror image of the "Swift Boat" liars:

MoveOn.org wrote:Yesterday was John McCain's 72nd birthday. If elected, he'd be the oldest president ever inaugurated. And after months of slamming Barack Obama for "inexperience," here's who John McCain has chosen to be one heartbeat away from the presidency: a right-wing religious conservative with no foreign policy experience, who until recently was mayor of a town of 9,000 people.

Huh?

Who is Sarah Palin? Here's some basic background:

- She was elected Alaska's governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience.1
- Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest.2
- She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000. 3
- Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.4
- She's doesn't think humans are the cause of climate change.5
- She's solidly in line with John McCain's "Big Oil first" energy policy. She's pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won't be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.6
- How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.7

See? MoveOn spouts the same sort of crazy lies as the "Swift Boat" folks or Fox "News". The Swift Boaters say "Obama is a secret Muslim" and MoveOn says "Palin opposes listing Polar Bears as endangered"! All made up lies!

Oh, uh, wait... The Swift Boat lies about Obama being a "secret Muslim" have no basis in reality, but - oops - MoveOn provides actual references:

1. "Sarah Palin," Wikipedia, Accessed August 29, 2008
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin
2. "McCain Selects Anti-Choice Sarah Palin as Running Mate," NARAL Pro-Choice America, August 29, 2008
http://www.naral.org/elections/election ... palin.html
3. "Sarah Palin, Buchananite," The Nation, August 29, 2008
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/jstreet/ ... uchananite
4. "'Creation science' enters the race," Anchorage Daily News, October 27, 2006
http://dwb.adn.com/news/politics/electi ... 3554c.html
5. "Palin buys climate denial PR spin—ignores science," Huffington Post, August 29, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-gra ... 22428.html
6. "Protecting polar bears gets in way of drilling for oil, says governor," The Times of London, May 23, 2008
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/e ... 987891.ece
7 "McCain met Palin once before yesterday," MSNBC, August 29, 2008
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/ ... 07122.aspx

Sure, those references include NARAL and the Huffington Post, but they also include Rupert Murdoch's Times of London.

There is one factual error in the MoveOn thing: when Palin was mayor - the 2000 census had her town at a little under 5,500 people, not "9,000" as MoveOn claims! See - totally untrustworthy!

But really, MoveOn is just a mirror image of the Swift Boat liars....

Fuck that Sarah Palin bitch..... Seriously, this shit pisses me off so much.... they are appealing as fuck to all the western mountain man type macho bullshit, we don't need no arabs fucking sledneck asshole types. Her husband works on a rig on the north slope, blah blah, he is a champion snownmobile racer, she has all these kids, wants to drill the everloving shit out of alaska, is extremely conservative, definitely majorly anti-abortion, and in the papers out here, (Billings Gazette, Casper Star Tribune, etc) they paint her as an enemy of big oil. RIGHT! I am so frikkin scared now, McCain is definitely back in the race. He is the devil and this move proves it.

Even though her daughter is pregnant, she still believes abstinence is better than sex education.

they are stupid as hell and that's why everyone will love them. the religious psychos will love that she is forcing that redneck boy to marry her daughter. I am sure McCain is loving the media frenzy. Vomit.

Shamis wrote:Even though her daughter is pregnant, she still believes abstinence is better than sex education.

I'm glad that Obama gave a genuine, personal statement to the effect of "it's none of our business." I'd love to see McCain give a statement repudiating the "Obama is a Muslim" lies and saying that someone's religion is none of our business...

Because it is a government policy issue, I do have one personal issue/question with the situation: Does she 1)really understand how pregnancies happen and 2)really understand how condoms work?

I know it sounds almost crazy to have to ask, but there are so many people out there who are fuzzy on the concepts, that we need to ask. The absence of this information in "abstinence only education" makes this an issue. (Actually, the for-profit companies that provide "abstinence only" courses in places like Texas public schools go so far as to tell kids that condoms don't really work - overtly this is a "scare tactic" to tell them to just not have sex at all, but the reality is that it backfires, and when the kids do eventually do what comes naturally, they are far less likely to use condoms because they've been told that they're useless anyway. I wonder if young Miss Palin has been exposed to this sort of "education"?)

More importantly: "the setup"
So, McCain picked Palin - let's all assume that a month or two prior to the decision, Palin had told the McCain campaign about the pregnancy during the vetting process. (Of course, it's possible they didn't - but let's go with the assumption that the McCain campaign was less cluster-fucked on this than they have been on lots of other things.) So, the campaign announced the selection of Palin on Friday, August 29th. Then .... nothing. When were they going to address this little "issue"? Was it "not important" enough to get ahead of the story? Were they going to, I don't know, wait a couple of weeks? Maybe they thought it wouldn't "get out"?

The only plausible explanation I can think of is that 1)they knew the story would "get out" and 2)they waited until it "spread on the internet" as a setup so that they could frame the situation as "nasty left-wing bloggers spreading rumors" that had to be addressed. See how those terrible left-wingers (in cahoots with Obama!) are intruding on the Palin family's private lives? It's so awful that they've dragged this out to smear her!

Of course, the official statement from the campaign was timed literally within minutes of Gustav's landfall... (That, my friends, is fucking brilliant!)

Personally, I do suspect clusterfuckage in the McCain campaign on this issue, but that once they realized it was inevitable, they probably made the wrong call by waiting for the rumors to get out. McCain has a great track record of minimizing political harm by getting his version of the story out to especially friendly press first, so he can both frame the issues and change the story from "McCain fucked up" to "Maverick McCain goes to the press first! So brave!" (He used this technique when it was clear that his involvement in the "Keating Five" scandal was going to get out, and had Cindy do the same when it was clear that her apparently criminal acts in relation to her opioid addiction was going to get out.)

I'm strongly opposed to any "education" that doesn't involve the facts. Every high school graduate should understand how the reproductive system works, and how effective various forms of birth control are. Anything other than that is retarded. Even if they tell them to wait till they're married, they still need to figure it out then, other wise they'll have 80 kids and have to live in an all mexican neighborhood.

dmw wrote:Fuck that Sarah Palin bitch..... Seriously, this shit pisses me off so much.... they are appealing as fuck to all the western mountain man type macho bullshit, we don't need no arabs fucking sledneck asshole types. Her husband works on a rig on the north slope, blah blah, he is a champion snownmobile racer, she has all these kids, wants to drill the everloving shit out of alaska, is extremely conservative, definitely majorly anti-abortion, and in the papers out here, (Billings Gazette, Casper Star Tribune, etc) they paint her as an enemy of big oil. RIGHT! I am so frikkin scared now, McCain is definitely back in the race. He is the devil and this move proves it.

As much as there's the idea that Palin would appeal to women voters, the reality seems to be the opposite. In the breakout of a recent Rasmussen poll, women have a less favorable impression of Palin (48% favorable, 30% unfavorable, 30% not familiar) than men (58 fav, 23 unfav, 17 not fam). The really big gap is on the question "Is Palin ready to be president?" On that women say 25% yes /48% no / 28% not sure. Men said: 35% yes /41% no / 25% not sure. Basically, women are a lot more skeptical than men in looking at Palin.

On the point of "did McCain do a through job vetting Palin, or was it a fuck-up?", evidently the campaign said that the FBI did a background check, but the FBI says it didn't. ooops.

But, odds are, none of this matters. It sounds like the right-wing loves Palin, and that's the most important thing for McCain. His weakness among the base was a big problem. By selecting "one of them" he will get a lot more money, get endorsements from pulpits and get a lot of "feet on the ground" and voter turnout.

Wouldn't it be nice if politicians took their jobs and influential roles on society a little more serious?

F' that. Might as well hold out and not vote for a candidate until the right one votes. I'll wait until the half black, half Chinese, half Canadian (once removed), 1/3 Jewish - Taoist, transgendered, metrosexual Wiccan decides to run. Cause I think their population really needs a representative leader in office.