BruSays: Thanks for the kind words.

Well, if it comes to that, where else can you take your puck, but….Oh Canada. I managed to avoid that self-imposed exile during the Vietnam war because I was 1-Y. Looks like they may get me in the end, though.

tdbach: Very well said.

As long as Americans choose their presidents based on some “share-a-beer-with” quotient, we’re doomed. Obama’s HUGE task will be to show that an intelligent, articulate, well-educated (sure, go ahead…“elitist”) IS the better choice.

(Tdbach: If Obama is unsuccessful, where the puck is your preferred destination?)

I wouldn’t put a lot of stock in this Politico story. Every floundering campaign on the brink of losing has its share of in-fighting and finger-pointing. Who knows what ax these anonymous sources have to grind?

That said, I would not be a all surprised to see Sarah Palin on the top of the GOP ticket in 4 or 8 years - assuming they lose this election. She may be completely out of her league in the White House, shockingly underqualified according to any reasonable standard for the “Leader of the Free World,” but that hasn’t stopped republicans from fielding such a candidate before - and winning! Reagan? A b-grade movie actor who confused war movies with war experience. GW? A failed oil businessman and hard-core drink and druggie who only got into Yale because his family endowed it to the hilt.

Ultra lightweights have become, not the exceptio but the ideal for the GOP. And I think we have to assume there’s good reason. Part of it might be that the modest skills and intellect of these figureheads is proven to appeal to a broad swath of the electorate who resent “elitism” - which they associate with Ivy League smarty-pants and liberal social engineering. Reagan, Bush (unless you saw his diploma, you’d never know he went to Yale), and Palin are as far removed from that horrifying image as you can get. Part of it, I’m quite sure, is that these people are relatively easy to manage and influence. The GOP just wants to make sure they get elected. Once they have the office, they can work the “strings” to advance their agenda. All the left’s mockery of their candidate as “stupid” and “ignorant” just plays into their hand. “You see how elitist they and their supporters are? They think YOU are stupid, too!”

It’s an ugly and cynical ploy. And it works. I just hope Obama does a good job with the very, very difficult mess these guys have left us with. That’s the only way to hold them off. If the problems are just too great for even a brilliant leader like Barrack, we’ll probably have a lip-sticked pit bull, hockey mom as our next president.

If we do, I’m getting the puck out of here.

Obama says “we are all going to have to do a little
belt-tightening and sacrificing.”  It would behoove him to suggest that his friends on wall street do a little sacrificing.  They fucked the system but we are the ones who have to pay for it.  Obama sounds like Bush and Reagan.

Some interesting comments from Garrison Keillor:
http://www.alternet.org/election08/104728/

re:

“Now the fifth daughter on the twelfth night
Told the first father that things weren’t right
My complexion she says, is must too white
He said come here and step into the light
He says hmm you’re right, let me tell the 2nd mother this has been done.
But the 2nd mother was with the seventh son
And they were both out on Highway 61.”
Bob Dylan

Daniel, October 26 at 3:09 pm #

“Palin is not even a politician… she is making a mockery of our political system by running on her merits as a woman alone.”

Merits? Palin is making a MOCKERY of women in general and motherhood in particular! She belittles us all!

She can claim NO merits!

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn’t you ?
People’d call, say, “Beware doll, you’re bound to fall”
You thought they were all kiddin’ you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin’ out
Now you don’t talk so loud
Now you don’t seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone ?

Bob Dylan…

This is what I did not want to see. See thinks herself capable of being vp if mcpalin wins the election, but if mcpalin does not she will be ready for 2012. This woman is definitely not of leadership material. Knowing one’s own limitations is a most important aspect of life which allows one to back off or take on certain events in life. Besides, who will take care of her newborn kid? But to keep going after something that one cannot handle is insanity. Because if she succeeds, her limitations could bring down the country if there is still one left. And apparently she has no problems with the idea that sex was the major reason for her selection, to attract all those nascar, snowmobilers and spectator sport tough guys that would be dreaming of their chance of dipping into the executive pool.

Oops!

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/ALASKA_ENDORSEMENT?SITE=COBOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

I think you got your holiday’s mixed up. Easter in the spring does not have anything to do with Christ’s birth. The Easter weekend is associated with His death, burial, and resurrection. Christ’s birth is associated with Christmas not Easter, which is in December. If you don’t understand your religious holiday’s don’t use them as references, it makes you look as dumb as Palin.

Sarah Palin is an American treasure.  She’s only been on the national scene for eight or nine weeks.  How many other politicians do you know who have shaken things up in that length of time?  People like her don’t come along every day.  Talk about entertainment - who else is like her?  Anybody who gets Peggy Noonan’s or George Will’s nose out of joint can’t be all bad.  Why doesn’t the left have colorful politicos?  Even Al Franken has gotten all serious.

I was recently asked by some quasi-religious types whether recent events, including the emergence of the Governor of Alaska, onto the national political stage, was really a tell-tale sign of the End Of Days.
They were somewhat shocked when I replied that it does no good to pass the buck to the invisible, when clearly (and quite visibly) all of these troubles are a result of deliberate human activity.
I must admit the gimmicky quality to all of this is very troubling. The hockey mom. The pit bull with lipstick. And of course, Joe the plumber, who should be considered an insult to every licensed tradesman in this country.
Now I’ve been told that Sarah Palin has sworn off her fancy RNC paid-for duds, and is now back to wearing her own clothes, from her favorite consignment shop in Alaska.
Which reminds me… I better put in another call to L.L. Bean, to see if those neoprene waders can be rush delivered.
This stuff is starting to get awfully deep.

For the last two months, John “Reach Across the Aisle” McCain and Sarah “the Rogue” Palin have been accusing Barack Obama of a variety of unforgivable sins. He’s a socialist. He has terrorist affiliations. His background is suspect, as is his patriotism. He wants to tax and spend the country deeper into debt, and raise a “white flag” in Iraq. This list goes on and on. If McCain and Palin believe even half of the things on their list, how can they possibly give the standard unifying and gracious concession speech on the night of November 4th? How can Palin go from pitbull to poodle in a matter of hours without looking like a complete hypocrite? What can either of these candidates say that won’t come across as grotesquely self-serving. McCain will see it as his swan-song, where his primary objective will be to repair the damage he has done to his own honor and future ability to work in the Senate. Palin will, no doubt, see it as her opportunity to launch her future political aspirations and demonstrate her stunningly ignorant assumption that she is now the brightest star in the Republican Party. I’m sure she’s too self-absorbed and high on herself to realize that the Republican Party is going to ditch her faster than a Jamaican sprinter. John McCain, who has spent the last year telling the country that he has a record of being bi-partisan, is now going to have to work with the Senate Majority Leader and, in some ways, the Speaker of the House, whom he has spent the last two months ridiculing in his campaign. After slinging so much mud in the final weeks of their campaign, McCain and Palin have dug themselves into a deep and slippery hole. Watching them try to climb their way out of it on the night of November 4th is going to be better than an episode of “Survivor”.

She hasn’t had enough experience to be called a ‘successful’ Gov…Ask Jennifer Granholm how long it takes til your policies bite you in the Ass.
The people handling the Entire Campaign are also working off an archiac premise. Reason they’re having problems fundementally is because their Fundemental concept is flawed. People have come to realize ‘Trickle down’ = Feudalism. The top % hold back the wealth and opportunities and regualte how much will be allowed to TRICKLE down to the LOWER segments.Kinda like Hoover Dam, blocking the Flow of ‘Liquidity’. The other side of the Dam is a Dust bowl and they’re letting the ‘water’ out in Spitfuls. So she’s working off a Shit agenda.
Then there are those personally held beliefs which are making people question her motivations. “Keep up the Good Work’ to the Alaskan Separatist Leader who hates the American Gov’t? Her Church who has 2 Witch hunters and thinks God speaks to them through Tongues..Come on How many Christians want to be associated with that practice? Really why are Christians allowing their Faith to be Lumped in with all others? Catholic & protestants taught Us not all Chrisitans share the same philosophies. Why should a Lutheran scarific their own religious Identity to be considered a Christian. This is what Evangelicals have done, hidden their crazy doctrines under the Umbrella of ‘Christianity’. bu tthat is what every group who which to control power does…adheres like parasites to others so their uniqueness (Deviation) is not as evident,ei Easter was a pagen Holiday in celebration of spring, not the Birth of christ, he hadn’t been born yet!They graft themselves on to an eclectic term and then subvert it.
Sarah Not everyone believes in the ‘End of Days’ and certianly find no reason to work towards it. In fact many faithfuls leave such decisions as to When,Where, how and Whom to that which we call ‘The Almighty’. Such doctrines We find Presumptuous and Heretical.
Oh and most of US Ameircans Like America for Her diversity too, it encourages far more opportunities to succeed in this ‘Great Experiement’.
Strike three…She’s Out!

I have been carrying around this fear that wakes me up at night and leaves me feeling like I don’t have the right to feel happy about the future.That none of us do.

And it is because of what you have been spewing about.  About Senator Obama and who he is and who he knows.

First of all, I think slander of any kind can be dangerous especially if the wrong people wrap their warped minds around it and proclaim it to be their truth. Then we are in for some major trouble. And in my heart of hearts, I don’t think you would want this on your conscience.

I am disagree with almost everything you say and I can fight to keep your thoughts from becoming a reality, but I can’t be responsible for somebody else’s behavior because of what you are saying and what this campaign has been doing. But , you and the campaign of McCain will be held responsible.

I strongly feel that all of this talk about Bill Ayres and Senator Obama has got to stop and stop now before you cause some unthinkable tragedy to happen. People have got to stop saying the name “Hussein” as if towers will fall and people will die. It is a name. Nothing more. Nothing less. It is not evil.

Words can make people overthrow rational thought and do things they might not have considered if this type of talk does not stop now.

You have got to stop pouring gasoline on the fire that is burning in the deranged hearts of some of the people in this country. Please stop it now.

I do not want to hear that some good man who was meant to bring a new future and sense of hope to a lot of Americans will not be around to see the dream realized. I don’t want to read of his widow’s pain and taste the salt from his daughter’s tears.

Been there. Done that.

I was a child when JFK was shot down and a your girl when the two fine and strong voices of hope were tragically silenced within months of each other in 1968.

I can’t have that happen in my lifetime again. There are too many of us out there who bear the wounds of a few who believed an untruth and took deadly action. They silenced our hope, they crushed our peace and they had help. Words pushed them off the deep end. Oh, yes, they had help.

You don’t have to be living in a trailer to feel you can bring down a good man. There were parties held in mansions after Caroline Kennedy lost her father too soon. Hate can wear overalls and sport a few less teeth just as much as it can walk around in a suit that costs more then some people make in a year.

I never thought I would be reduced to begging, but it means this much to me and to all the people who know that it only takes one person to turn the world up side down.

Please, Ms. Palin stop all this talk about Senator Obama making nice with a national terrorist. Don’t give a sick and delusional mind permission to end yet another dream.

You would not be able to forgive yourself and neither would I.

Power corrupts. Even the precorrupted

Assuming Obama wins, Palin’s future in politics may be running with Joe the Plumber on the Constitutional Party ticket. The Repugs will not want to make the same mistake twice.

On the other hand, should the next President be McCain, I predict he will not live 2 years and Palin will make Bush look good.

All one has to do is listen to “her”.  Anyone with an operational brain knows this is an uneducated, ignorant, but opportunistic, quasi intelligent, human who realizes her Warhol moment and will take maximum advantage of it.  Just pray that the majority of us U.S. citizens have the brains to recognize this for what it is.

I dont know what to feel. Pity for McCain for making this monumental blunder, or pity for Palin for actually believing she was ready for the big-time? Pity for the dim-bulbs who rawkessly support McCain-Palin? No, pity me for having to put up with policy delivered on us by these out-of-touch dimbulbs.

Maybe I should pity mainstreammedia who daily has to try and make the incredulous credible!

Or, maybe I just need to stick to my revulsion for repub political domination that has very nearly destroyed us all. And simply enjoy watching the GOP/RNC unravel.

From one more stalwart conservative who has come out supporting Obama. The worthy, wordy Christopher Hitchens.

http://www.slate.com/id/2202163/

“A candidate may well change his or her position on, say, universal health care or Bosnia. But he or she cannot change the fact—if it happens to be a fact—that he or she is a pathological liar, or a dimwit, or a proud ignoramus. And even in the short run, this must and will tell.”

“On “the issues” in these closing weeks, there really isn’t a very sharp or highly noticeable distinction to be made between the two nominees, and their “debates” have been cramped and boring affairs as a result. But the difference in character and temperament has become plainer by the day, and there is no decent way of avoiding the fact. Last week’s so-called town-hall event showed Sen. John McCain to be someone suffering from an increasingly obvious and embarrassing deficit, both cognitive and physical. And the only public events that have so far featured his absurd choice of running mate have shown her to be a deceiving and unscrupulous woman utterly unversed in any of the needful political discourses but easily trained to utter preposterous lies and to appeal to the basest element of her audience. McCain occasionally remembers to stress matters like honor and to disown innuendoes and slanders, but this only makes him look both more senile and more cynical, since it cannot (can it?) be other than his wish and design that he has engaged a deputy who does the innuendoes and slanders for him.”

~~~

“With McCain, the “experience” is subject to sharply diminishing returns, as is the rest of him, and with Palin the very word itself is a sick joke. One only wishes that the election could be over now and a proper and dignified verdict rendered, so as to spare democracy and civility the degradation to which they look like being subjected in the remaining days of a low, dishonest campaign.”

Considering the fact that most of the high level Republican strategists are not end-times Christians there may be, in some bar somewhere, a Frankenstein moment of realization. They’ve used the fundy vote for a number of years, but it’s important to remember that they’ve mostly just used those voters.

Now they’ve got a monster that they can’t really control. She’s rallying “the base”, but not to the party. She’s rallying it to herself.

Sarah Palin may be a “rogue”, a “popular governor” a “hockey mom”  a this or a that.  Whatever label the msm puts on her, it’s not going to “rebrain” her. She’s a corrupt and dangerous idiot who happens to have what some people (especially the Repub males) think is a pretty face and a “hot” body.  Sorry, but that doesn’t make a smart politician nor even a smart woman OR man.  We’ve seen evidence of Palin’s intelligence level in interviews with Charles Gibson, Katie Couric, and in that incredible answer to a third grader about what she thinks is the role of the VP in US government.  Palin seems to think Washington amends the Constitution, and she wants to completely void Roe v. Wade. 

For more evidence of Palin’s extremist views and her limited intellect, CHECK OUT her phone interview with James Dobson…yes, THAT creep… with Focus on the Family, in which she refers to the ‘Republican Platform’ as a bunch of “planks,” at this link:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/sarah-palin-might-not-kno_b_137163.html

You can listen to the AUDIO of the conversation ( it takes awhile to get to the Platform talk…) at this link:

http://www.citizenlink.org/clspecialale ... 008476.cfm

Everyone forgets, we are dealing with republicans here. The only way they will ever nominate a woman or a minority, or gay as the lead on the ticket is if the party splits in two, with the old conservative pro-business populists on one side, and the wacko religious right on the other.

They already shot themselves in the foot this year(if that wasn’t the plan all along) by not throwing their support behind Mitt Romney. Now that we see america is still not enthusiastic about a black president(although they find him far more palatable than the old crackpot McCain) Does anybody doubt that a young vibrant repub candidate might just be in the lead right now? But alas, that old time religion on the wacko right shunned Mitt, for he was not a christian! What do you think the odds are that a subservient, lowley, woman would get the repub nod? After all, Eve was evil!

And a minority! are you crazy? They had their chance with Bobby Jindal, but since his skin color won’t get him into the country club, he was a no. Oh, the repubs like their uncle tom and aunt jane pundits on the news channels, but that is as diverse as the grand old party gets! JC Watts on the ticket? please!

Gays! although the last few years have shown repubs have a certain proclivity towards homosexuality, they still could not see past it far enough to nominate Crist for Veep, making Fla a shoe on nov 4th. Why? because of the rumors of his closeted gayness, of course!

The repugs are still the party of old white racists and sexists Until they change that image, they will have problems in all elections from here on.

But never underestimate the power of a dimmo to screw up!

Understand: unless the “primary system” is abandoned, the Republican candidate in 2012 will be nominated by the Republican primary process. As it stands now, Sarah Palin is likely to become nominated unless the Republicans can come up with their own version of Obama. Of course a lot can happen between today and 2012 which will eliminate her as a viable candidate even in the eyes of her most ardent supporters. Given the McCain disaster the Republicans may well abandon the primary system.

Usually when a bear or an elephant or any dangerous animal goes rogue; it is shot and killed.  Palin, being a rogue human will probably not be shot, at least in the literal sense; however in the figurative sense she should be eliminated!  A thoroughly disgusting human.  Amen!

Truthdig, daileykos, thinkprogress and other democratic websites are so excited about Obama being ahead in the polls they are forgetting about this: http://www.truthout.org/video/102308A

I think I have a better idea for Sarah. She can go back to Alaska where, she gave a speech to her hubby’s group of friends this year(AIP) supporting them, the very same group who want to leave America and become independent. They can elect her president of their newly formed country and leave the rest of us alone.

As for her claiming she wants to totally fund all expense for children with disabilities, if this is really true then why did she cut funding for Special Olympics in her state?

Do we really need someone with her lack of moral character and skewed view of her version of the world, running America? We have has enough of that already.

She is a proven liar who hasn’t a clue to the real world. As for her being the most popular Governor, I have many doubts after doing a lot of researching on her. Maybe they are judging her on looks as there are few women Governors, some may think she looks better that all those over the hill male Governors.

Palin´s rogueness has been formed from the Alaskan wilderness..and her husband´s ties with Alaskan Sucessionist groups that hate the lower 48.