IPOD
RADIO
Gov. Palin makes no sense when she speaks. Let's look at one example. Gov. Palin was asked which is more dangerous an unstable nuclear Pakistan or an unstable nuclear Iran. Not only did she not answer the specific question but to make matters worse she moved the conversation to the issue of the location of the central war on terror.
She states "And as for who coined that central war on terror being in Iraq, it was the General Petraeus and al Qaeda, both leaders there and it's probably the only thing that they're ever going to agree on, but that it was a central war on terror is in Iraq. You don't have to believe me or John McCain on that. I would believe Petraeus and the leader of al Qaeda."
Read that again, Palin states that she "believe[s]...the leader of al Qaeda" as the best source of information about where the US should be dedicating resources to fight al Qaeda! How can this make sense? Taking advice from our enemies about the best place to defeat them? This is insanity. Palin is out of her league.
She states "And as for who coined that central war on terror being in Iraq, it was the General Petraeus and al Qaeda, both leaders there and it's probably the only thing that they're ever going to agree on, but that it was a central war on terror is in Iraq. You don't have to believe me or John McCain on that. I would believe Petraeus and the leader of al Qaeda."
Read that again, Palin states that she "believe[s]...the leader of al Qaeda" as the best source of information about where the US should be dedicating resources to fight al Qaeda! How can this make sense? Taking advice from our enemies about the best place to defeat them? This is insanity. Palin is out of her league.
Sarah Palin continues to demonstrate what a poor choice John McCain made. She is uninformed, inarticulate, and seemingly stupid.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4479049n
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4479049n
Op-Ed Columnist
Blizzard of Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 11, 2008
Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks" when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?
These stories have two things in common: they're all claims recently made by the McCain campaign _ and they're all out-and-out lies.
Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 _ my first year at The Times _ trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign's claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.
But I can't think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign's lies in 2000 were artful _ you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.
Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn't say "no thanks" _ she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would "not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative."
Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn't righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.
So the whole story of Ms. Palin's alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.
Or take the story of Mr. Obama's alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for "age and developmentally appropriate education"; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.
And then there's the claim that Mr. Obama's use of the ordinary metaphor "putting lipstick on a pig" was a sexist smear, and on and on.
Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they're probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being "balanced" at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn't say that he's wrong, it reports that "some Democrats say" that he's wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.
They're probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being "McCain campaign lies," it becomes "Obama on defensive in face of attacks."
Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign's lies? I mean, politics ain't beanbag, and all that.
One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues _ on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.
But there's another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.
I'm not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team's ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.
I'm talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?
What it says, I'd argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.
More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on September 12, 2008, on page A23 of the New York edition.
Blizzard of Lies
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: September 11, 2008
Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, "Thanks, but no thanks" when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?
These stories have two things in common: they're all claims recently made by the McCain campaign _ and they're all out-and-out lies.
Dishonesty is nothing new in politics. I spent much of 2000 _ my first year at The Times _ trying to alert readers to the blatant dishonesty of the Bush campaign's claims about taxes, spending and Social Security.
But I can't think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign's lies in 2000 were artful _ you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again.
Take the case of the Bridge to Nowhere, which supposedly gives Ms. Palin credentials as a reformer. Well, when campaigning for governor, Ms. Palin didn't say "no thanks" _ she was all for the bridge, even though it had already become a national scandal, insisting that she would "not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative."
Oh, and when she finally did decide to cancel the project, she didn't righteously reject a handout from Washington: she accepted the handout, but spent it on something else. You see, long before she decided to cancel the bridge, Congress had told Alaska that it could keep the federal money originally earmarked for that project and use it elsewhere.
So the whole story of Ms. Palin's alleged heroic stand against wasteful spending is fiction.
Or take the story of Mr. Obama's alleged advocacy of kindergarten sex-ed. In reality, he supported legislation calling for "age and developmentally appropriate education"; in the case of young children, that would have meant guidance to help them avoid sexual predators.
And then there's the claim that Mr. Obama's use of the ordinary metaphor "putting lipstick on a pig" was a sexist smear, and on and on.
Why do the McCain people think they can get away with this stuff? Well, they're probably counting on the common practice in the news media of being "balanced" at all costs. You know how it goes: If a politician says that black is white, the news report doesn't say that he's wrong, it reports that "some Democrats say" that he's wrong. Or a grotesque lie from one side is paired with a trivial misstatement from the other, conveying the impression that both sides are equally dirty.
They're probably also counting on the prevalence of horse-race reporting, so that instead of the story being "McCain campaign lies," it becomes "Obama on defensive in face of attacks."
Still, how upset should we be about the McCain campaign's lies? I mean, politics ain't beanbag, and all that.
One answer is that the muck being hurled by the McCain campaign is preventing a debate on real issues _ on whether the country really wants, for example, to continue the economic policies of the last eight years.
But there's another answer, which may be even more important: how a politician campaigns tells you a lot about how he or she would govern.
I'm not talking about the theory, often advanced as a defense of horse-race political reporting, that the skills needed to run a winning campaign are the same as those needed to run the country. The contrast between the Bush political team's ruthless effectiveness and the heckuva job done by the Bush administration is living, breathing, bumbling, and, in the case of the emerging Interior Department scandal, coke-snorting and bed-hopping proof to the contrary.
I'm talking, instead, about the relationship between the character of a campaign and that of the administration that follows. Thus, the deceptive and dishonest 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign provided an all-too-revealing preview of things to come. In fact, my early suspicion that we were being misled about the threat from Iraq came from the way the political tactics being used to sell the war resembled the tactics that had earlier been used to sell the Bush tax cuts.
And now the team that hopes to form the next administration is running a campaign that makes Bush-Cheney 2000 look like something out of a civics class. What does that say about how that team would run the country?
What it says, I'd argue, is that the Obama campaign is wrong to suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would just be a continuation of Bush-Cheney. If the way John McCain and Sarah Palin are campaigning is any indication, it would be much, much worse.
More Articles in Opinion » A version of this article appeared in print on September 12, 2008, on page A23 of the New York edition.
So I went for my first ever MRI - shoulder injury, bicycle accident etc. Possible torn rotator cuff...ouch!
Anyway, the pre-screen asks if you have any tattoos and the technician warned me that my tattoo might get warm or hot and if that happened to signal her so they could stop! Has anyone ever experienced this or heard of this? I asked a woman here at work who has a few tattoos and has had an MRI and she wasn't familiar...
Odd.
Obama in '08!
Anyway, the pre-screen asks if you have any tattoos and the technician warned me that my tattoo might get warm or hot and if that happened to signal her so they could stop! Has anyone ever experienced this or heard of this? I asked a woman here at work who has a few tattoos and has had an MRI and she wasn't familiar...
Odd.
Obama in '08!
John McCain is a dumb-ass. This pick for a VP is ridiculous and bound to be one of the biggest flops in US Presidential political history! He and his party have constantly criticized Obama for lack of experience and then he selects Palin who (apart from being an arch conservative) has only two years of experience !
This is insane! McCain is insane!
The voters of America must come out against this ticket. Palin supports drilling in the protected land of the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Palin's husband is an oil insider ala Bush and Cheney. Palin believes that global climate change is exaggerated and opposes the protecting the polar bear because it will have a negative impact on oil exploration. Palin has stated that she seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate a woman's reproductive choice!
McCain is not fit for the presidency. Palin cannot be second in charge.
Spread the word, get the vote out!
Oh yeah, Gore was awesome the other night at the convention!
This is insane! McCain is insane!
The voters of America must come out against this ticket. Palin supports drilling in the protected land of the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Palin's husband is an oil insider ala Bush and Cheney. Palin believes that global climate change is exaggerated and opposes the protecting the polar bear because it will have a negative impact on oil exploration. Palin has stated that she seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade and eliminate a woman's reproductive choice!
McCain is not fit for the presidency. Palin cannot be second in charge.
Spread the word, get the vote out!
Oh yeah, Gore was awesome the other night at the convention!
What the fuck kind of country do we live in? I really can't believe the bullshit that the government gets away with. They fuck up the economy and then bail out the rich, they won't provide health care for those that need it, they engage in meaningless wars for the profit of the already filthy rich and we all pay the price.
Give everybody guns! But no health care to heal the injuries they inflict!
Deregulate the banks so that the rich can invest cheaply with no risk because a buddy on capital hill will get you bailed out! But let individuals loose their houses because of poor banking regulation!
Don't teach the public anything about preventing pregnancy and then make abortion illegal or impossible!
Don't invest in alternative fuels and panic when the oil gets expensive!
What a bunch of greedy and devious fucking fuck nuts!
Give everybody guns! But no health care to heal the injuries they inflict!
Deregulate the banks so that the rich can invest cheaply with no risk because a buddy on capital hill will get you bailed out! But let individuals loose their houses because of poor banking regulation!
Don't teach the public anything about preventing pregnancy and then make abortion illegal or impossible!
Don't invest in alternative fuels and panic when the oil gets expensive!
What a bunch of greedy and devious fucking fuck nuts!
JULY 2008