Sarah Palin for VP, 47 day till election

Greetings from artikleblak’s little corner of the world.
Been workin, workin, workin.
These gas prices are no fukin joke!

47 days till the November election and I am forecasting a slight Sarah Palin trainwreck.

I respect her as a woman, mother, wife and governor.

However I think her views are to extreme for most Americans, once they stop, look and listen.

With her not knowing the “Bush Doctrine” and running for the vice presidency of the United States of America, should speak volumes!!!

If they win, God forbid something happens to John McCain.
The United States is not Wasila, nor is it AK.
And I don’t think she would be prepared to take the reins of the Whitehouse.

As for Barack. FINALLY!!! Showin some fight, some get tuff with these mf Repubs!!

If u have to…..bring out a little bite of the Southside of the Chi……

47 days and counting.

Any and everyone has to ask themselves, ” What am I gonna do the be part of this historical presidential election?

Hey Sarah! “Toot toot, I hear a train a coming………..”

Peace and Obama-grease,

artikleblak

I am not the type to believe in absolute truths. I believe they can be dangerous. Nevertheless, I have a healthy respect for integrity, especially among those talking about their background and qualifications for a political post. McCain and Palin are riding on a train of momentum right now powered by novelty and a collection of falsehoods. Make no mistake – elections have been won with less.

The Mendacity of Hope

Most Dems I know tuned into both conventions and were particularly interested in the speeches of Palin and McCain. In the time since, these two typical Republicans have been taking cues from Madonna and trying to reinvent themselves in order to appeal to voters weary of the party of George Bush.

It really has become an interesting spectacle. The McCain/Palin ticket has tried to downplay all the ways they are like George Bush and have gone so far as to try and position their ticket as some kind of opposition party.

Only they are not. Not only are they not an opposition party – they are not a lot of other things they are claiming to be and the only thing they have a record of reforming is the truth.

Let’s start with the simplest of white lies. Here is what McCain likes to say about Palin, her plane and her eBay to nowhere:

“You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor and sold it on eBay — and made a profit!” McCain declared in Wisconsin at a campaign stop on Friday.

That’s the story they are selling to the masses hungry for change and reform. Unfortunately, that is only a fairy tale. The truth is that the plane did not sell on eBay, but was later sold to a private party. Alaska originally paid $2.7 million for the plane and then sold it for a loss:

A businessman from Valdez, Alaska, Larry Reynolds, paid $2.1 million this week for the state-owned Westwind II jet.

This is not really a big issue. McCain was probably merely confused and caught up in the burgeoning mythology that has been sprouting out of Palin’s resume.

And mythology leads us right into the next point. However, first I would like to take a moment to say that I had something entirely different planned for the blog today, but when I see that McPalin is still going around the country telling people that the governor opposed the infamous ‘bridge to nowhere’ it troubles me. What troubles me most is that it is a lie. That the McCain campaign is asserting it as a fact is even more troublesome, both to me and to the state of Alaska:

During her first speech after being named as McCain’s surprise pick as a running mate, Palin said she had told Congress “‘thanks but no thanks’ on that bridge to nowhere.”

In the city Ketchikan, the planned site of the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere,” political leaders of both parties said the claim was false and a betrayal of their community, because she had supported the bridge and the earmark for it secured by Alaska’s Congressional delegation during her run for governor.

McPalin, the ticket that will oppose such things as earmarks and is holding up the bridge to nowhere as an example, is nothing more than a ticket composed of politicians who accept earmarks and were in favor of a bridge that led to nowhere. The McCain campaign continues to lie to America about the bridge and has yet to try and correct their misstatements about once supporting a bridge and its accompanying earmarks. The issue gained national prominence in the media as an example of wasteful government spending and was killed before Palin ever changed her tune and decided she was against it – but wait, there is more:

The state, however, never gave back any of the money that was originally earmarked for the Gravina Island bridge, said Weinstein and Elerding.

In fact, the Palin administration has spent “tens of millions of dollars” in federal funds to start building a road on Gravina Island that is supposed to link up to the yet-to-be-built bridge, Weinstein said.

“She said ‘thanks but no thanks,’ but they kept the money,” said Elerding about her applause line.

Palin is a reformer who was in favor of the bridge until the nation looked up to Alaska and saw her wasteful spending and only then she decided she would cave to national scrutiny and renounce her support. Nevertheless, she kept the money earmarked for the bridge.

In the end, she opposed the bridge she once promoted but decided to keep the $223 million earmarked for it:

Alaska was still granted an equivalent amount of transportation money to be used at its own discretion.

And while we are on the Camp McCain’s love of earmarks, here are a few more for you. Let’s start with the stint Palin did as a mayor. While in office as mayor of Wasilla, a town slightly larger than half the capacity of Michigan Stadium, aka The Big House, she secured millions in earmarks. How many millions?

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin employed a lobbying firm to secure almost $27 million in federal earmarks for a town of 6,700 residents while she was its mayor, according to an analysis by an independent government watchdog group.

I suppose being the mayor of a small town is sort of like being a community organizer, except that you can arrange for your small town to receive millions of dollars in federal earmarks.

The part that really gets me is the massive discrepancy between what the McCain campaign is telling us and what actually happened. McCain likes to describe Palin as someone who is known for:

“…standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies — someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past, someone who’s stopped government from wasting taxpayers’ money.”

The McCain ticket has a record of being heavily entrenched with lobbyists and taking HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars from government earmarks. Now those same people are talking about their record of standing up to wasteful government spending and attacking Obama for his earmarks. Maybe someone should pull the McCain campaign aside and tell them that, under Palin’s leadership, Alaska gets more money in earmarks per person than any other state in the United States.

John McCain brought up a good point in that last quote, ‘the failed policies of the past.’ McCain’s campaign is positioning Senator McCain and his earmark happy sidekick as people who can change Washington. However, McCain’s campaign is being led by lobbyists and old school Republican insiders:

Veteran lobbyists Charles Black and Rick Davis, both wise in the ways of big money and Republican strategy, have been longtime advisers and run his current campaign along with Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé put in charge over the summer to bring discipline to a flailing effort.

How does McCain offer something different when he goes to Steve Schmidt for guidance, who is a spokesman for Dick Cheney? How can he say that he will not be influenced by Washington dollars when veteran lobbyists Charles Black and Rick Davis run his campaign? If he turns to his trusty sidekick, she will be too busy taking more funds for the state of Alaska to offer any real assistance.

The only thing I see McCain and Palin changing are the facts. They are running on someone else’s platform, someone else’s resume. The idea that they oppose earmarks and lobbyists and will break away from the failed policies of the Republican party under George W. Bush is a pipe dream.

If they pull this off – if they can convince the people that the truth is something entirely different than what all the facts add up to be, then that will be reform. It will be a massive reform of American political intellect, with voting citizens demonstrating en masse we no longer care about what is true. If they can successfully dodge the media, lie about who they are and win the election, then McCain and Palin will have sent us down a new path we have never taken as a nation before, conceived in deception and dedicated to the proposition that nothing is as it seems.

It reminds me of the ending of The Usual Suspects, when Verbal Kint, played by Kevin Spacey, walks out of the police station and back into his dark world, leaving the audience with these chilling words:

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

If the McCain Palin ticket succeeds, the trick will be on us. They are simply not the people they are claiming to be. They will tell us they oppose wasteful government spending, they will tell us they oppose the influence of lobbyists and they will tell us they are going to Washing to change it and it is all demonstrably false.

McCain will continue to cast himself as a maverick, a reformer and an agent of of change but if we are naive enough to hand over the presidency to him, then we will see the real McCain. Give McCain all that he wants and then wait until day one in office.

And like that, poof. He’s gone.

CNN REPORTS: Sarah Palin the real sex tape exposed on CNN tonight! Sarah Palin in public exposes her chest to the press in a former press release last … McCain; commented Friday …

In case you missed Sarah Palin’s speech last night at the Republican Convention where she accepted the nomination for Vice President, I wanted to show you a small clip:

Wait…  that’s not it…

Hold on…

I’ve written on this subject before( http://tammyr2.wordpress.com/2008/06/30/164/ )and my love of books and reading, and intellectual freedom is no secret. And libraries! I can still close my eyes and smell the library of my youth. One of life’s true joys is finding the next great read sitting on the shelf just waiting for me me me to check it out.

 When I heard about this from Harry I swear I felt my heart stop beating in my chest. 

There is nothing I could say to improve on this post from http://lycanthropia.whistleandfish.com/. It is appropriately titled “The Horror…the horror.”

FADE IN:

Wednesday, August 20, 2008 – 3:46 PM EST. Conference room. John McCain sits at a table, nodding off. Pacing around him are Karl Rove, Steve Schmidt, and Carly Fiorina.

ROVE: Johnny, wake up! We need to pick your VP already.

MCCAIN (snapping awake ): What? Huh? I was a POW.

SCHMIDT: That’s not what we’re talking about right now.

MCCAIN: I already told you: Lieberman. He can find Iran on a map and everything.

ROVE: Right. A Jew boy that not only 8 years ago ran against us with a tree-hugger. That’ll do us wonders with our fly-over states.

MCCAIN: Fly-over?

FIORINA: He’s talking about the states we fly over.

MCCAIN: Who are you?

ROVE: The economy is front and center. Mitt is the strongest choice by far.

MCCAIN: Isn’t he a moron?

SCHMIDT: It’s Mormon. Not moron.

MCCAIN: They get to have a bunch of wives. I have seven.

FIORINA: No, you have seven houses. You only have one wife.

MCCAIN: Seriously, who are you?

SCHMIDT: We need someone that will set us apart from Bush.

MCCAIN: Why would we want to do that? Bush kept us safe for the past 8 years for crying out loud!

ROVE: That’s true. I mean, not counting, you know, the whole 9/11 attack…

MCCAIN: We need someone with proven experience. Someone ready to be President if I fall and can’t get up. Or at least a chick that’s really hot.

FIORINA: You’re a moron.

MCCAIN: It’s Mormon. Not moron. Pay attention, whatever your name is.

ROVE: That’s actually a brilliant idea. A woman VP to continue the Hillary campaign. She’s already done our work for us – why let it stop now? And it really doesn’t matter who we pick, just so long as she’s female.

MCCAIN: And hot.

FIORINIA: How about me?

MCCAIN: Hot as in good looking.

ROVE: The less experience the better. It’ll highlight Obama’s inexperience. And if anyone questions her, we’ll merely cry sexism. I’m loving this idea.

FIORINIA: Women aren’t stupid enough to fall for that.

SCHMIDT: You’ve obviously never landed in the fly-over states.

ROVE: Who do we have on tap that’s been in lots of photos holding semi-automatic rifles? Someone the Christian Right can relate to. You know – hates gays, a woman’s right to choose, and intellectual curiousity. Someone like that.

SCHMIDT: How about Sarah Palin? I have a poster of her shooting an AK-47 on my office wall.

FIORINIA: You guys, Palin’s a hockey mom who got her experience in the PTA. She was mayor of a town of 7,000 not only a year ago.

MCCAIN: Yeah, but now she’s Governor of the biggest state in the union!

FIORINIA: With the smallest population. I don’t think land-mass plays a role here. Plus, Obama may not have a lot of experience, but he’s been scrutinized endlessly under the world spot-light. We don’t know anything at all about this Sarah lady.

MCCAIN: Sure we do. I met her at a cocktail party the other day. We talked for almost 10 minutes. She’s hot.

ROVE: That’s vetted enough for me.

SCHMIDT: Yeah, I’m good.

FIORINIA: You guys, this is crazy.

ROVE: Exactly. And that’s why this will be the wedge issue we’ve been needing. The fanatics will go nuts defending her. The less logical our move, the better.

SCHMIDT: Worked for the George W. Bush campaigns.

ROVE: It’ll start a national controversy. It’ll steal the thunder from Obama’s attention.

FIORINIA: Okay, but what if we win? And what if something does happen to McCain. Are we really going to entrust this unknown woman from Alaska to run our country??

ROVE: See, that’s sexist.

FIORINIA: It’s not sexist. It’s a legitimate question.

SCHMIDT: Why are you so sexist?

FIORINIA: I’m a woman, moron.

MCCAIN: Mormon.

ROVE: And that’s why you’re going to be the one out there on the forefront, telling everyone who asks a single question about Sarah Palin that they’re being sexist.

FIORINIA: I’ll do it. But, I’m telling you, I think women are way too intelligent to fall for this circus show.

ROVE: Ah wha’do you know? You’re a woman for christsake.

SCHMIDT: Alright, so it’s settled. Sharon Palin it is?

FIORINIA: It’s Sarah Palin. Not Sharon.

SCHMIDT: Whatever. She’s a girl. And she’s our girl. Right Johnny?

ROVE: John??

–As we pan over to John McCain, who’s fast-asleep and snoring, we…

FADE OUT.

aka she was for it, before she was against it.

Jesus, what hath McCain wrought upon the electorate?

Cheers,

Tom

OK…so here we go. Sarah Palin is a winner. If you have heard her speaking today, you will see what has happened in this country in less than 24 hours. Both Democrats and Republicans have been blown away by this surprise announcement.

This is going to revitalize the GOP in a much needed way, and it is exciting to see such enthusiasm on board.

Whether you are Democrat or Republican or Independent….let’s face it, it is good to see this kind of spirit, youth, and “woman fire” that Sarah is exhibiting.

Go Sarah….you are a winner.

Ron Largent   

www.ronlargent.com

Sarah Palin scandal video below:

Awesome coverage!