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McCain Picks Gov. Palin As Running Mate
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Aug 29, 2008 02:49 PM
from the the-one-upping-continues dept.
from the the-one-upping-continues dept.
Many readers have written to tell us about McCain's choice of Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin as his VP choice. "Palin, 44, a self-described 'hockey mom,' is a conservative first-term governor of Alaska with strong anti-abortion views, a record of reform and fiscal conservatism and an outsider's perspective on Washington. [...] If elected, Palin would be the first woman US vice president, adding another historic element to a presidential race that has been filled with firsts. Obama, 47, is the first black nominee of a major US political party. The choice of a vice president rarely has a major impact on the presidential race. Palin will meet Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a debate in October."
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Quote from the Future (Score:5, Funny)
Joe Biden: "Governor Palin, I served with Dan Quayle; Dan Quayle was a friend of mine. Governor, you're no Dan Quayle."
Re:Quote from the Future (Score:5, Funny)
Joe Biden: "Governor Palin, I served with Dan Quayle; Dan Quayle was a friend of mine. Governor, you're no Dan Quayle."
In this case, that quote would be a great compliment.
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Re:Quote from the Future (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, that's what we in the humor biz call "the joke".
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A female Dan Quayle (Score:5, Funny)
Age (Score:5, Funny)
Little experience and unqualified (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry, being a mayor of a town of 9000 doesn't qualify you to be Vice President, especially when the presidential candidate has age and a history of health problems going against him.
As for governor, Alaska has a population of 670,000, roughly twice the population of the CITY I live in.
Alaska also does not face the same challenges as other states. They basically don't have many taxes since they get all their wealth from oil, and so they don't have to deal with the budget issues other states have been stuck with. And she's only been governor for 2 years. At least George W. Bush had a lot more experience than that as governor of Texas. Also, they've been getting a huge windfall of revenue whereas most states are struggling to balance their budgets due to the high oil prices. There are no statewide income, sales, property or inheritance or state taxes (some localities have their own local taxes). Palin actually RAISED taxes on the oil companies and limited their exploration and development (which affects everyone else).
She has no international experience, or for that matter, any national experience.
Obama had millions of votes for him as a senator, several times the entire population of Alaska. Even as a state senator he represented far more people than she has as a mayor.
Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"when they shamelessly pander to the stupid lobby?
--"
You mean like anybody that has pandered to the anti-nuclear lobby?
Guess what they all do.
And I have not problem with creationism being taught as long as it is taught as science. So every bad fact they have can be pointed out.
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Hey my teacher taught use the theory of spontaneous generation and how it was proven to be not correct.
The problem is that the many creationist know just enough science that unless you know a lot of science you must take it on "faith" that they are wrong.
The majority of pro-evolution zealots on slashdot don't have enough science background to disprove a good creationist. Way to often they "believe" what they learned in school.
Since I do attend church and I am actually pretty good at science I was once invited to a creationist talk.
They had some very interesting facts but they really didn't understand them.
One of my favorite was that they found Carbon-14 in diamonds so they couldn't as old as the evolutionist said they where. They really didn't enjoy my lesson on radio active decay and quantum physics.
But I can tell you this. If you don't know a lot of science then they are totally believable.
I would bet that a lot of people on Slashdot only believe in evolution because they distrust religious people and not because they actually understand what is wrong with creationism.
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Funny)
The Republican ticket is now complete
Yeah, I still couldn't get the voice of Darth Vader out of my head for that.
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
In addition to that, she's also pretty rabidly pro-life. This is, among other things, a definite carrot toward the more religiously-oriented part of the conservative base - you know, the part that doesn't thing McCain is conservative enough (in the fundamentalist sense) for them...
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
>Both sides of the abortion debate are wrong.
One of the most sensible things ever said about the whole matter. (especially on /.) I said one of the other most sensible things about abortion, when talking to a pro-life friend:"
"Do you want to forbid abortion, or do you want to stop it?"
Abortion isn't a hobby, people don't do it for fun. I don't even think people do it lightly - I think most people feel that they are forced into it by circumstances. (Whether or not those feelings are "valid" or not is a different matter.)
But I think things can be done to address the underlying circumstances that cause people to feel that they need an abortion, and perhaps one of the foremost is to instill in girls the self-esteem that can help in postponing sexual activity. I once heard, "The most important give a father can give his daughter is to love her mother." Model a healthy relationship. We're talking *real* family values, not the fake tripe generally peddled by politicians.
My biggest fear about overturning Roe v Wade is that people will feel that the job is done, and even start dismantling the things that are in place now, like counseling, adoption assistance, etc. Oh boy, we've written a rule! That'll stop it! Then self-righteous heads will plop back down into the sand.
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, because prior to abortion, girls never had sex...
Oh wait, they did, it's just that prior to the Suffrage Movement, people had no problem marrying off their fourteen year old daughters when they got knocked up, and then just screwing with the math a bit so the product of all that teenage lust looked like it was popped out of the vagina a few months later than it really was.
That's what I so detest about Fundementalists, they live in this fantasy land that never was. Kids have been fucking for tens of thousands of years (even longer, if you extend "kid" to apply to our more ancient ancestral teenage pregnancy cases). They like to make believe that there was this mythical Christian population that existed prior to 1965 that was virginal and liked sock-hops with chaperones and always got home at 9pm after a real swell time at Pop's.
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
how can anyone take a candidate seriously when they shamelessly pander to the stupid lobby?
I don't know, it doesn't seem to bother the Obama supporters.
Waiting to be modded as a troll while the OP gets modded as informative or interesting. Even though both took shots at the other side.
No bias to see here.
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
They all pander to the stupid lobby, it's their biggest constituency. So really, you should be asking "How can anyone take any candidate seriously?" The answer is, you can't unless you're stupid.
Look at Obama for instance. He couldn't even wait until he was nominated to betray his stated principles and vote for immunity for telecom's who illegally tapped phones. If you expect him, or any other candidate to remain true to his campaign promises, you're part of that stupid lobby.
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Funny)
This is so sexist, vpilf.com doesn't have a single picture of Dick Cheney.
Could I mod this (-1, Nauseating)?
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Well-rounded? (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a little something I read about the government not being allowed to outlaw or advance any particular religion. And, yeah, any form of ID? Yup, that's a religious belief, not a scientific one.
And for strict biblical literalists, teaching a heliocentric model of the solar system is going against their religion. Are we supposed to teach geocentrism in public schools, as well?
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Re:Well-rounded? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not what the Constitution says. Besides, I learned about different belief systems back in public high school in my world history class. You can't ignore religion and the Constitution doesn't require that it be ignored.
Yeah, history class, not science class. You want to teach different theologies in history class? Be my guest. I loved learning about all the Abrahamic religions in my high school world history class.
You want to teach that in science class? Screw you, you're not teaching your religion as though it's science.
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Re:Creationism (Score:5, Insightful)
Because when people talk about presenting "both" sides of an issue, they usually don't mean the "informed" and "uninformed" sides.
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Re:Sure shes pretty and all but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Any discussion on Creationism needs this David Brin quote:
I find it truly stunning how many people can shrug off stuff like this, preferring instead a tiny, cramped cosmos just 6,000 years old, scheduled to end any-time-now in a scripted stage show. An ancient and immense and ongoing cosmos is so vastly more dramatic and worthy of a majestic Creator. Our brains, capable of exploring His universe, picking up His tools and doing His work, seem destined for much more than cowering in a corner, praying that some of our neighbors will go to hell... - David Brin
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Re:What's so bad about teaching science history? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Evolution has nothing to say one way or another about the planet's origins. It doesn't even address the origins of life. It addresses solely how individual Species might originate.
2. At the time Darwin published his book, most people generally agreed that the earth was at least a few hundred thousand, possibly millions of years old. The concept of a 6000 year old Earth was introduced by Thomas Aquinas and largely ignored until the 19th century. And even he was simply speculating on the length of time since Adam left the Garden, based on genealogies given in the Bible, not on the age of the entire Earth, and certainly not on the relative age of the universe. Even amongst Christians, a 6000 year old universe didn't become an article of faith until the rise of radio preachers in the 1920s.
3. Evolution was widely accepted in 1859, when Darwin published his book. What was hotly debated was the mechanism by which species may evolve. The revolutionary idea Darwin put forth was that natural selection alone would be powerful enough to be that mechanism. There were many other theories being put forth at the time.
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So, what are your front page setting again? (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it, though, neither Palin (a self-admitted creationist) nor Biden (a proponent of stronger police powers) is a 'nerd-friendly' pick.
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Re:Good choice (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Good choice (Score:5, Insightful)
Seeing as if he (McCain) somehow manages to get elected, I give his remaining lifespan a duration somewhere between James Garfield & William Harrison's presidencies. The good news is we'll have our first woman president. The bad news is she has experience leading about 670000 people total (9000 if you just want to go by her mayoral experience), is rabidly pro-life & loves Big Oil. It will be kinda like Bush, but with a vagina.
And don't bother to rail on me either, I'm voting for Barr. I've given up on the Republicrats, the only thing that will make our leaders stand up & take notice is another political party coming to power & taking it away from them.
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Re:Good choice (Score:5, Insightful)
The ability of a VP to become President has to be considered. 9 VP's took over for the president. Out of 43 presidents, that is 20%.
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Re:Good choice (Score:5, Insightful)
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IF he goes senile???? (Score:5, Insightful)
if you subscribe to the Bush doctrine on torture (as McCain now does), then McCain himself was never "tortured" at the Hanoi Hilton and the anti-American statements he made to his captors are, in fact, truthful and accurate intelligence.
from a comment on a story in the Wash Post.
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Re:Good choice (Score:5, Informative)
Palin's elected office:
Obama's elected office:
Rounding down, that gives Palin 8 years, most of which was at the city level, and Obama 11 years, all of which is at state level or above.
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Re:Good choice (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not so sure this is a great political move by McCain.
One of the things the Democrats have been hammering McCain on is his lack of judgment. I can easily see Palin as another example of poor decision making.
While selecting a VP as a strategy to win the election is part of the decision tree (going after the disenfranchised Hillary votes), choosing a VP is also about having someone that can step in and do the presidents job competently.
I have a feeling this is going to backfire.
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Re:Bad Choice (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you overestimate how much the people will care.
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Re:Bad Choice (Score:5, Informative)
She tried to get a state trooper fired for divorcing her sister and after that failed, fired his boss for not firing him.
True, she has been accused of this. But so far, the only people implicated in trying to get this state trooper fired are members of her family and staffers in her office, without her knowledge. The only documentation of any action by her pre-dates when she was elected governor.
I don't think it's going to get traction, because the state trooper isn't exactly a sympathetic figure. He was suspended for using a stun-gun on his 10-year-old stepson, and is alleged to have threatened Palin's father (among other things).
Story here, with links to background material: http://www.adn.com/politics/story/468174.html [adn.com]
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Re:I think you are a little early on your verdict. (Score:5, Interesting)
AND, no one has been able to link Palin directly to the firing in question. Not through phone logs, witnesses, or anything else.
It also appears that Hillary voters are moving to Palin in a big way, according to some of their blogs.
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Re:Hahahah (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, given the title, I am tempted to assume you're joking. But the capacity of Republicans and their supporters for self parody can't be down played. Perhaps you're actually serious. Next you're going to be going on about Palin's experience and readiness to be president in a job that is, as they say, a heart beat away.
I think that the opposite of your claim is true: McCain is doomed. He just destroyed the "Obama doesn't have the experience to lead" meme. Sure Palin is a hard right social conservative. But she also happens to be an ex-beauty queen with an ethical scandal in Alaska. The social conservatives claim that women should be at home, not running for the Vice Presidency. Of course they're a bit inconsistent on this. I think that you'll find that Palin and her big breasts are a huge liability for McCain. If nothing else, she'll emphasize that he's very old.
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Re:Hahahah (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow you're COMPLETELY overlooking the Hillary/Obama race, and I'm honestly shocked you don't see it.
Hillary/Obama race was often summed up as: First woman or First black man?
You don't remember that?? Because, at least in my neck of the woods, there are still many who wish it had gone the other way. Many who would rather give the woman thing a go first...
Now McCain gets to tap into that vibe, and probably shore up at least a few of those voters that would have preferred Hillary over Obama. They didn't really WANT to vote McCain before, but they would have just for the woman factor, and because they have some kind of irrational hatred for Obama. Now they've been handed a reason to want to vote for him, too.
In short, my grandmother who has voted Democrat for the last 50 or 60 years will now almost certainly vote Republican.
Genius, really.
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Re:Hahahah (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't remember that?? Because, at least in my neck of the woods, there are still many who wish it had gone the other way. Many who would rather give the woman thing a go first...
Because they've outgrown misogyny but not racism?
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Re:Hahahah (Score:5, Insightful)
That has nothing to do with her being a woman.
it has a lot to do with her being a general snob and/or jackass. :-)
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Re:Hahahah (Score:5, Insightful)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahjlNLo_3TFE&refer=home [bloomberg.com]
She did not fire that cop for the right reasons. She fired him for the wrong reasons. And you should not encourage that.
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Re:Hahahah (Score:5, Insightful)
The ethical scandal is that she then got the commissioner fired for not doing as she wished. *That* is the big problem... she is, just like the current executive, intolerant of people who are not yes-men.
I, for one, do not want another my-way-or-the-highway executive, because no person is infallible.
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Re:Pandering to the Vagina Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
What's sad is that when Democrats run women, it's looked at as somehow genuine but when Republicans run a woman it's looked at as pandering.
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Re:Pandering to the Vagina Vote (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because it is? How concerned have you ever seen the Republican party over women's rights? Hell, they have a hard time caring about anything other than wealthy, property owner rights.
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If she was a man? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Pro Life (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:nice pick (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:nice pick (Score:5, Funny)
Yea, she is pretty hot for her age, definetly a MILF, I'd tap that too if I got the chance. :)
I suppose you mean a VPILF [vpilf.com]?
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Re:nice pick (Score:5, Funny)
But having worked with her, would you vote for her?
I guess that all depends on what "I'd tap her" means...
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Re:Obama is not "African American" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Can we put the experience factor to rest? (Score:5, Informative)
McCain very effectively put the experience issue to rest by picking Palin, which makes you wonder what the last month of crap from him and his surrogates was about. Obama as celebrity? Palin has actually won beauty contests. Obama passes legislation with his name on it in the U.S. Senate; Palin governs a state with less population than Austin, TX. Palin is also a creationist, arguing for equal time in science class.
Magoo very effectively hijacked the media cycle with this choice, but one wonders why he didn't choose from a legion of much more qualified, experienced, effective female Republicans.
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Re:Can we put the experience factor to rest? (Score:5, Informative)
We dont know what Obama stands for except that he for the most socialist policy that i have ever read...coming just shy to that of marxism.
Yeah, Obama was totally promoting all sorts of government and worker ownership of the means of production last night. Right after he did the crowd surfing.
Read a book [wikipedia.org] before you rant. And perhaps a reference on Obama's economic policy [barackobama.com], too.
*sigh*
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Re:My only problem with this pick is... (Score:5, Informative)
When the story broke, he was stripped of all committee assignments and asked to resign, which he refused to do. What more do you want, Nancy Pelosi to spike him in the eye with a high heel?
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