"You decide '08" aka pick the lesser of 2 evils you didn't want to begin with '08

[Ladywriter 7,783]

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[Ladywriter 7,783]

Were you as frustrated as I was to hear the crowd chant "drill,

baby, drill" during the Republican Convention?

A John McCain presidency promises more of what we have seen for

the last eight years. Time and time again, McCain has said no to

renewable energy, no to higher fuel efficiency, and yes to

subsidies for Big Oil, the nuclear industry and other big

polluters.

Then, with his most important decision, he picks as his

running-mate someone who surely makes Dick Cheney proud. Gov.

Palin has denied that global warming is man-made and supports

shooting of wolves from low-flying airplanes.

On the other hand, the Obama-Biden team has the most

comprehensive energy plan ever put forward by a presidential

campaign. With them we have a chance - finally - to turn a

corner when it comes to fighting global warming and ensuring a

clean energy future.

McCain and Palin? They will continue the disastrous Bush-Cheney

energy plan - and we just can't afford four more years of this

energy mess.

Here at the League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, we're

fighting to elect the real environmental champions America needs

and prevent four more years of out-of-touch energy policy.

Sincerely,

Gene Karpinski

President

League of Conservation Voters Action Fund

[Ladywriter 7,783]

Despite the media feeding frenzy, we still may be asking ourselves, "Just who exactly is Sarah Palin?" Mixed in with the Davy-Crockett-meets-SuperMom vignettes -- all those moose hunting, ice fishing, snowmobiling, baby-juggling, and hockey-momming moments -- we've also learned that she doesn't care much for her former brother-in-law and wasn't afraid to use her office to go after his job as a state trooper; that she was for the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it; that she's against earmarks unless they benefit her constituents; that she can deliver a snappy wisecracking speech, thinks banning books in libraries is okay, considers herself a pit bull with lipstick, and above all else, wants to drill the ever-lovin' daylights out of every corner of her home state (which John McCain's handlers have somehow translated into being against Big Oil, since she insisted on a marginally bigger cut of the profits for Alaskans).

Oh, and -- not that this is very important to Americans or the planet -- she now thinks that global warming might possibly be human-made sorta though she didn't before, despite the fact that the state she governs is on the frontline of climate change. And, of course, she's a classic right-wing, fundamentalist Christian: against abortion -- check; against same-sex marriage -- check; against stem-cell research -- check; favors teaching Creationism in public schools -- check.

It's that last item, her willingness to put Creationism up against the teaching of evolutionary science in the classroom on a he-says-she-says basis, that's far more revealing of just who our new Republican vice presidential candidate is than we generally assume. It deserves the long, hard look that it hasn't yet gotten. Most Democrats and progressives tend to think of the teaching of Creationism as a mere sidebar item on their agenda of political don't-likes, but it's not. Sarah Palin's bias towards Creationism is a window into her political soul and a measure of John McCain's hypocrisy.

It's possible that the public has been fooled into thinking of McCain as a "maverick" when it comes to his party's abysmal record on the environment, but his selection of Palin as his running mate sends quite a different message. In fact, he's potentially put future generations on a "bridge to nowhere" (or perhaps to the fourteenth century). Whether we know it or not, we should now be duly warned: The Palin nomination is the equivalent of launching a "surge strategy" in the Republican war on the environment.

more

[Ladywriter 7,783]

EIGHT SHORT TAKES ON WHY OBAMA CAME OUT AHEAD IN THE DEBATE

AlterNet

AlterNet's Don Hazen and Joshua Holland weigh in, along with

Taylor Marsh, Jane Hamsher, John Nichols and Sheryl Crow.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/100565/

MAD DOG PALIN

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com

The scariest thing about John McCain's running mate isn't

how unqualified she is -- it's what her candidacy says about

America.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/100551/

[Ladywriter 7,783]

Not My Gal campaign against Palin by the women of youtube

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way more just go look

[Ladywriter 7,783]

Sarah Palin's Very Bad Interview

this bitch goes above and beyond stupid asshole

[Ladywriter 7,783]

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1m9aSeLva2w

[Ladywriter 7,783]

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[Ladywriter 7,783]

WASHINGTON -- There is something about Sarah Palin that gnaws at me, and it isn't that the Republican vice presidential nominee has wilted under the soft light shined upon her by CBS' Katie Couric. It isn't that I disagree with Palin on just about every single substantive issue I can think of, and probably some I haven't thought about.

What's bothering me about Palin isn't even Palin. It is that she's been made into the novelty act -- even the freak show -- of the presidential campaign.

Her mark in history may well turn out to be like that of the Pet Rock, one of those artifacts that has little value except as an object that is dissected for its cultural significance. During the brief but happy life of the Pet Rock in the 1970s, millions of Americans shelled out $3.95 to purchase an ordinary gray stone, packaged in a small cardboard box complete with an official Pet Rock training manual. The fad petered out in six months, but not before the promoter got rich and thousands of backyards became Pet Rock graveyards.

Now we prepare to watch Palin in today's vice presidential debate, compelled more by a cult-like curiosity than a call to civic duty.

Certainly some undecided voters may watch because they want to be convinced that the Alaska governor is qualified to be vice president or to determine, once and for all, that she is not. Republicans already attracted to her social conservatism and her family story will be cheering her on and will defend her against any slip or slight, real or imagined. Just as surely, some liberals will be itching to see what material Palin manages to serve up as fodder for Tina Fey and the writers at "Saturday Night Live."

Palin has become a sideshow: See Sarah stumble through the Couric interviews. Watch clips of Sarah's beauty-pageant swimsuit competition on YouTube. Laugh uproariously as Tina does a better Sarah than Sarah herself.

This is a terrible predicament not only for Palin but for all American women.

For decades women have protested the way we are objectified, only to have a governor running for vice president turned into an object. She is an object of over-the-top partisan projections, from the left and right. She is an object of scorn. And in some quarters, an object of sympathy.

I do not blame Palin for this. Which young, ambitious male governor, upon getting the call to join the national ticket from his party's presidential nominee, would humbly say, "No thanks, I'm not ready"? Yet some have laid Palin's failure to turn down the chance at promotion at her feet, as if it were her responsibility -- and not John McCain's -- to have chosen more wisely. Some conservatives who just a few weeks ago took delight in skewering liberal feminists with the rhetorical equivalent of Palin's moose-gutting knife now are aghast at the gaping holes in her knowledge.

McCain and his campaign bear full responsibility. Palin's initial introduction as one tough reformer turned quickly into a sales pitch for one tough hockey mom, capable of nursing an infant and nudging legislation to passage at the same time. Palin wasn't expected to know anything about throw-weights. She was there to ease the worries the Republican right harbors about McCain and, it was implausibly suggested, to attract Hillary Clinton supporters to the Republican ticket.

The way Palin was sequestered from the media helped transform her into a calcified figure to be seen but not heard, at least not heard speaking from anything but a script. Like a Pet Rock, she wasn't supposed to escape from the yard or require genuine training. She only had to stand and absorb every odd projection of the national imagination, however awkward and demeaning a task that might be.

Now Palin goes live alongside Democrat Joe Biden, and an odder couple has rarely shared a political stage. I do not expect Biden to be anything but superior in his knowledge and in the stature he is able to project to a worried public. He will be on guard against condescension. I do not expect Palin to collapse in utter confusion or do anything less than survive -- even if she barely survives. But surviving a debate and the post-debate spin isn't qualification for the vice presidency. That is the nub of it.

Palin's candidacy isn't shattering the glass ceiling for her or any other woman. It is killing us with a thousand cuts.

Marie Cocco's e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.

© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group

[Ladywriter 7,783]

Republicans Challenge 6,000 Voter Registrations in Montana

[Ladywriter 7,783]

BUSH'S THIRD TERM THE MOVIE

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[Ladywriter 7,783]

Sarah Palin's Debate Performance Tanked Among Women

Debate Was an Open Book Test for Palin

[Ladywriter 7,783]

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Arianna Huffington

Posted October 3, 2008 | 01:44 AM (EST)

BIO Become a Fan

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VP Debate: McCain's Big Gamble Comes Up Snake Eyes

I watched the vice presidential debate in a ballroom at the Four Seasons hotel in Aviara, just north of San Diego, along with a couple of hundred women attending Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit -- a receptive audience, you would think, for a debate featuring a woman who might become the most powerful in the land. It was an ideologically mixed crowd, including representatives of ExxonMobil, a major sponsor of the conference.

If the reaction of the Republican women in the room is any indication, it was not a very good night for Sarah Palin. The only noises heard during the debate were groans when Palin turned her folksiness meter up to 11 (which was often), and applause when Joe Biden delivered his best moments of the night: making personal his understanding of the plight of single parents sitting around their kitchen tables, looking for help; and his impassioned pushback on Palin's endless description of John McCain as "a maverick."

The loudest ovation of the night -- at least in that ballroom (granted, not the most representative-of-America crowd) -- came when Biden said that Dick Cheney was the most dangerous VP in history.

After watching this debate, I am convinced that if the country somehow has a collective mental meltdown and elects Sarah Palin, she will be even more dangerous than Cheney. Not only does she want more power for herself than the Constitution grants -- or than Cheney took for himself -- but she is so obviously not equipped to be a heartbeat away from the presidency, it takes your breath away that McCain picked her. He claims to be putting his country first, but the debate proved beyond any doubt that he has actually chosen to put his country on the betting line and roll the dice. And they've come up snake eyes.

Friday morning, Meg Whitman, the co-chair of McCain's campaign, will be on a panel with Penny Pritzker, Obama's national finance chair, discussing the campaign. After the debate, I asked Whitman what she thought of Palin's performance. "Good enough," she said.

But good enough for what, exactly? After Thursday night, the only thing Palin proved herself good enough for is starring in her own reality show.

Watching Biden and Palin on the same stage was like watching a tennis champion walk onto Centre Court at Wimbledon only to find himself facing an over-eager amateur from the local high school. Or as Pat Mitchell told me, "Biden was taking part in a vice presidential debate; Palin was taking part in a junior high debate."

Here's how Esther Dyson put it: "It's pretty clear that Biden spent decades getting ready for this debate, learning from experience; Palin spent a couple of weeks, learning from handlers and speech coaches."

The only subject on which Palin displayed superior knowledge was when she corrected Biden on the proper delivery of "Drill, baby, drill!" Christie Hefner thought Palin's sex-tinged twist on the chant should be appropriated for a commercial. Perhaps for Viagra.

Other than that, Palin's grasp fluctuated between wafer thin and skin deep. The moment that most drove me to want to send her a book on Greek gods and heroes was her head-scratching response to the question about her Achilles heel. She apparently didn't know what that meant since she spent her allotted time listing all of her attributes as opposed to her most glaring weakness.

Ann Wojcicki, co-founder of 23andme, told me: "I was dying to hear something -- anything! -- from Palin that wasn't pre-rehearsed."

Throughout the entire 90-minute debate, Palin came across as an over-wound windup doll, sporting a pasted-on-smile expression that never varied, except when she winked. Which she did repeatedly -- and pathetically. It was the folksiest appearance since Hee-Haw went off the air.

"The home-spun homilies have to go," Martha Stewart told me. "And, oh my god, words do have ending consonants."

In the greatest disconnect of the evening, Palin repeatedly went to the Reagan well, offering up such Gipper classics as "there you go again" and that "shining city on the hill." But, really, during a week in which John McCain hopped on board Bush's $700 billion bailout, did Palin not see how incongruous it was to insist that government isn't the solution, it's the problem? And declare that all we need to get this country back on track is for the government to get out of our way? Isn't that what got us where we are today? Or had she been so busy cramming for the debate she didn't have time to read one of the so-many-she-can't-name-one newspapers she reads?

Joe Biden's only insincere moment was when he told her: "Governor, it was a pleasure to meet you."

A better exit line would have been: "Governor, it's a pleasure to think that, God willing, in 33 days, you'll be back where you belong -- shootin' moose and takin' on those big oil companies in Alaska."

My patience with Palin is waving the white flag of surrender.

[Ladywriter 7,783]

olpCyDA4kYA

[Ladywriter 7,783]

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[Ladywriter 7,783]

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[Crazy Gravy 100]

She'll push feminine rights back decades. Don't fall for it. Rebublicans wont to over rule Rowe vs Wafe. Bush added a sumpreme court justice that will vote that way. It's on going, Mccain and Palin will firther that, more apointments. Thats a reason to vote Obama. Mccain a maverick, yeah like shit, the agenda passes from one to another. More Bush. And Palin for the female voters, they gotta be crazy to fall for it. All this could've been prevented with Hillary. But I can trust Obama and Biden to stand up for the rights of women. These days "in god we trust" is an ideal not a nazi agenda. There are reasons for adoption. And here it is.

They care about a fetus, its got a right to live

but when that baby is born and in foster care, its one of us and they wont raise a finger to help it. Damn Arrg, Why, the hypocracy.

[Ladywriter 7,783]

I can answer yer last question in three words: new world order

I think the debate last night went well for Obama, not so hot for McSame. He referred to Obama as "that one", why didn't he just come out and say what he was really thinking; that nigger. Probably because the audience would have jumped him and kicked his ass. What a fuckin racist asshole.

Women and minorities save yourselves, vote for "that one" next month.

[Ladywriter 7,783]

Top Stories from Reproductive Justice & Gender on AlterNet

October 8th, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/

___________________________________________________________

From the editors:

At every turn, women's rights and well being are under attack. We have a Republican presidential candidate who has vowed to stack the Supreme Court with anti-choice justices if he's elected. We have a Republican vice presidential candidate who doesn't seem to know the difference between emergency contraception and abortion. And we have an economy that's crushing women, who make up the majority of people living in poverty. We're exploring these issues in this week's newsletter, and next week we'll be bringing you a concise election guide that compares Obama and McCain on all the most important reproductive justice and gender issues, including reproductive freedom, family planning, sex education, the minimum wage, health disparities and more.

Thanks for reading,

Heather Gehlert

Managing Editor

___________________________________________________________

OUR NEXT PRESIDENT WILL TRANSFORM THE SUPREME COURT

By Ellen Goodman, Washington Post Writers Group

John McCain has promised the court to the right wing, and

Roe v. Wade is first up on the chopping block.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/101210/

THE AGE OF UNBRIDLED CONSUMPTION JUST ENDED

By Lisa Wise, The Women's Media Center

The economic crisis, however painful, will lead to at least

one positive outcome.

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/101348/

WOMEN'S HEALTH: YET ANOTHER ISSUE SARAH PALIN IS OUT OF TOUCH ON

By Cecile Richards, Huffington Post

Women voting for McCain-Palin is like chickens voting for

Col. Sanders.

http://www.alternet.org/election08/101327/

SARAH PALIN'S DEBATE PERFORMANCE TANKED AMONG WOMEN

By Linda Hirshman, TheNation.com

Palin is a lot like a '90s "Rules Girl." She follows a

playbook that men respond to -- one that gives women

indigestion.

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/101536/

NEW POLL: PARENTS OVERWHELMINGLY SUPPORT AGE-APPROPRIATE SEX ED

By Scott Swenson, RH Reality Check

Political leaders are nervous about supporting comprehensive

sex education in schools. But it may be a bigger political

liability not to.

http://www.alternet.org/sex/101535/

WOMEN WHO TOOK ON THE TALIBAN -- AND LOST

By Kim Sengupta, Independent UK

Of five prominent Afghani women interviewed three years ago

by <i>The Independent</i>, three are dead and a fourth has

had to flee.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/101504/

WHICH CANDIDATE WOULD BETTER HANDLE THE HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC?

By Todd Heywood, RH Reality Check

Worldwide, 33 million people are infected. One candidate has

a formal plan to deal with this health crisis. The other

doesn't.

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/101029/

___________________________________________________________

AlterNet Blogs:

MCCAIN VOTED TO PROTECT DOMESTIC TERRORISTS

By Ryan Powers, Think Progress

McCain has repeatedly voted against protecting Americans

from domestic terrorists in the anti-choice movement.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/101954/

WOMEN IGNORED IN VP DEBATE

By Ruth Rosen, AlterNet

In the end, women will swing this election. Might be a good

moment to start speaking to them. And a cursory nod to

women's rights isn't enough.

http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/101531/

___________________________________________________________

These stories and more are available on in Reproductive Justice & Gender

on AlterNet.

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice

[Ladywriter 7,783]

This is the first of 4 videos to be produced by Wasilla Project.

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[Crazy Gravy 100]

why do ppl choose not to know and still favor MCain/Palin. It's sad, the info is out there.

[Myk JL 1,730]

why do ppl choose not to know and still favor MCain/Palin. It's sad, the info is out there.

If it's not on Fox News it's fake to them.

[Ladywriter 7,783]

ROTFLMAO!!!!

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[Ladywriter 7,783]

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makes me feel like pukeing al lover that bitch

[Ladywriter 7,783]

Added: August 23, 2008

(more info)

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