Drilling in Alaska

[HowardRoark]

Watching and reading the media this week, I believe they have given up all pretense of being objective. I don’t want to sound too much like Tex, but I am embarrassed for them.

The New York Times is going after a young American Indian girl for getting knocked up. Good God, they are as bad as we are taught Christopher Columbus was; racists and sexist to the core.

I thought they were for free sex. Why in the world do they feel the need to pick on this poor oppressed minority woman?

Let them drill in Alaska in peace.

[mraynrand]

Come now, Howard! The press isn't biased and certainly wouln't be caught dead being non PC. The little indian probably just had too much malt liquor and you know what happens to indians under the influence....



That's right, they get pregnant and gamble away their savings at casinos!





Excuse, me the PC police are at my door. Apparently, I'm being arrested.....

[texaspackerbacker]

Re: Drilling in Alaska

Watching and reading the media this week, I believe they have given up all pretense of being objective. I don’t want to sound too much like Tex, but I am embarrassed for them.

The New York Times is going after a young American Indian girl for getting knocked up. Good God, they are as bad as we are taught Christopher Columbus was; racists and sexist to the core.

I thought they were for free sex. Why in the world do they feel the need to pick on this poor oppressed minority woman?

Let them drill in Alaska in peace.

Why the hell don't you want to sound like me, Howard? i get a little bit fed up with your wimpy shit. Are you ASHAMED to be on right side--on the pro-American side--against the sick America-hating ASSHOLES of the left? If calling Obama's God damned pieces of shit "assholes" offends you, I'm sorry--FOR YOU for being offended by the truth.

You are on the right side of the great majority of arguments, but you somehow can't seem to get over your weird desire not to upset or insult the ASSHOLES and IDIOTS of the left who show nothing but hate and disrespect for this country and everything that is good about it.

[mraynrand]

When it comes to the treatment of Palin, I want to sound MORE like Tex. How do you like them apples? What a collection of nasty, vile, liars and HYPOCRITES. I did a search through about 10 liberal newspapers headlines and articles and it was running about 10-1 NEGATIVE articles on Palin. Based on WHAT? 1) Based on rumors that her baby with Downs Syndrome was her granddaughter 2) Based on jealous and dismissive treatment of her 'beauty queen' status. Even Ty Bigguns 'Hero' Andrew Sullivan threw out this insulting bullshit 3) Based on the pregnancy of her daughter or 4) Questioning whether it was appropriate for a mother to work with these family obligations. Dan Quayle must have been shitting in his pants thinking back to the Murphy Brown 'controversy' (Quayle had the Audacity to suggest a child was better off with a Mother AND a Father - I know, GASP!!!). Virtually none of the articles mentioned much of anything else, completely missing or completely glossing over any real accomplishments as politician (even most 'background articles' listed this stuff as a laundry list in the last paragraphs) focusing on characterizing her not as a Governor, but as a 'Hockey Mom' or 'Mother of Five.' - Descriptions no male governor would EVER receive (ask yourself if you even know how many kids any male governor has). The main stream media bias is unreal. The sick, twisted evil 'reporters' and 'newspeople', like Andrew Sullivan and Alan Colmes, who took rumors about Palin covering for her 'daughters pregnancy' and ran 'real news stories' based on rumors, should be fired. It's a stain on FOX news to keep the Colmes skeleton on their network.

[HowardRoark]

Re: Drilling in Alaska

If calling Obama's God damned pieces of shit "assholes" offends you, I'm sorry--FOR YOU for being offended by the truth.

I made a commitment to myself to leave the candidate’s feces out of the discussion.

They are off limits.

[hoosier]

Re: Drilling in Alaska

Watching and reading the media this week, I believe they have given up all pretense of being objective. I don’t want to sound too much like Tex, but I am embarrassed for them.

The New York Times is going after a young American Indian girl for getting knocked up. Good God, they are as bad as we are taught Christopher Columbus was; racists and sexist to the core.

I thought they were for free sex. Why in the world do they feel the need to pick on this poor oppressed minority woman?

Let them drill in Alaska in peace.

Where did the NYT "go after a young American Indian girl"???

[HowardRoark]

Re: Drilling in Alaska

Watching and reading the media this week, I believe they have given up all pretense of being objective. I don’t want to sound too much like Tex, but I am embarrassed for them.

The New York Times is going after a young American Indian girl for getting knocked up. Good God, they are as bad as we are taught Christopher Columbus was; racists and sexist to the core.

I thought they were for free sex. Why in the world do they feel the need to pick on this poor oppressed minority woman?

Let them drill in Alaska in peace.

Where did the NYT "go after a young American Indian girl"???

A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

[hoosier]

Re: Drilling in Alaska

A series of disclosures about Gov. Sarah Palin, Senator John McCain’s choice as running mate, called into question on Monday how thoroughly Mr. McCain had examined her background before putting her on the Republican presidential ticket.

On Monday morning, Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, issued a statement saying that their 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, was five months pregnant and that she intended to marry the father.

You say the NYT is "going after" Palin's daughter because it mentions her pregnancy? If that's all you have, it says more about you than about the NYT. Note that the NYT editorial page specifically rejects the idea that her daughter's pregnancy is a political issue.

Candidate McCain’s Big Decision

Published: September 2, 2008
More often than not, the role of a vice president is a minor one, unless some tragedy occurs. But a presidential nominee’s choice of a running mate is vitally important. It is his first executive decision and offers an important insight into how that nominee would lead the nation.

Skip to next paragraph
The Board Blog
Additional commentary, background information and other items by Times editorial writers.

Go to The Board » Readers' Comments
Share your thoughts on this article.
Post a Comment »
Read All Comments (128) »
If John McCain wants voters to conclude, as he argues, that he has more independence and experience and better judgment than Barack Obama, he made a bad start by choosing Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

Mr. McCain’s supporters are valiantly trying to argue that the selection was a bold stroke that shows their candidate is a risk-taking maverick who — we can believe — will change Washington. (Mr. Obama’s call for change — now “the change we need” — has become all the rage in St. Paul.)

To us, it says the opposite. Mr. McCain’s snap choice of Ms. Palin reflects his impulsive streak: a wild play that he made after conservative activists warned him that he would face an all-out revolt in the party if he chose who he really wanted — Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

Why Mr. McCain would want to pander to right-wing activists — who helped George W. Bush kill off his candidacy in the 2000 primaries in a particularly ugly way — is baffling. Frankly, they have no place to go. Mr. McCain would have a lot more success demonstrating his independence, and his courage, if he stood up to them the way he did in 2000.

As far as we can tell, Mr. McCain and his aides did almost no due diligence before choosing Ms. Palin, raising serious questions about his management skills. The fact that Ms. Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant is irrelevant to her candidacy. There are, however, very serious questions about her political past and her ideology.

If Mr. McCain wanted to break with his party’s past and choose the Republicans’ first female vice presidential candidate, there are a number of politicians out there with far greater experience and stature than Ms. Palin, who has been in Alaska’s Statehouse for less than two years.

Before she was elected governor, she was mayor of a tiny Anchorage suburb, where her greatest accomplishment was raising the sales tax to build a hockey rink. According to Time magazine, she also sought to have books banned from the local library and threatened to fire the librarian.

For Mr. McCain to go on claiming that Mr. Obama has too little experience to be president after almost three years in the United States Senate is laughable now that he has announced that someone with no national or foreign policy experience is qualified to replace him, if necessary.

Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has been one of Mr. McCain’s most loyal friends, said Tuesday that he was certain that Ms. Palin would take the right positions on issues like Iraq, Russia’s invasion of Georgia and Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions. That seemed based largely on his repeated assertion that Ms. Palin would be tended by Mr. McCain’s foreign policy advisers. That was not much of an endorsement.

Some of the things Ms. Palin has had to say in the recent past about foreign policy are especially worrisome. In a speech last June to her former church in Wasilla, Ms. Palin said the war in Iraq was “a task that is from God.” Mr. Bush made similar claims as he rejected all sound mortal advice on how to conduct the war.

Mr. McCain, Mr. Graham and others also claim that Ms. Palin is a fearless reformer who is committed to fighting waste, fraud and earmarks. Ms. Palin did show courage taking on some of the Alaska Republican Party’s most sleazy politicians. But she also was an eager recipient of earmarked money as a mayor and governor.

Mayor Palin gathered up $27 million in subsidies from Washington, $15 million of it for a railroad from her town to the ski resort hometown of Senator Ted Stevens, now under indictment for failing to report gifts.

The Republicans are presenting Ms. Palin as a crusader against Mr. Stevens’s infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” The record says otherwise; she initially supported Mr. Stevens’s boondoggle, diverting the money to other projects when the bridge became a political disaster. In her speech to the Wasilla Assembly of God in June, Ms. Palin said it was “God’s will” that the federal government contribute to a $30 billion gas pipeline she wants built in Alaska.

Mr. McCain will make his acceptance speech on Thursday, and Ms. Palin will speak on Wednesday. Those two appearances will go a long way to forming voters’ views of this Republican ticket.

As Senator Graham noted, Mr. McCain has to reach out beyond the party’s loyal base. “We’re going to have to win this thing,” he said. “This is not our race to lose.”

Mr. McCain’s hurdles are substantial. To start, he has to overcome Mr. Bush’s record of failures. (The president addressed the convention Tuesday night and now, McCain strategists fervently hope, will retire quietly to the Rose Garden.) That record includes the disastrous war in Iraq, a ballooning deficit, the mortgage crisis — and the list goes on.

To address those many problems, this country needs a leader with sound judgment and strong leadership skills. Choosing Ms. Palin raises serious questions about Mr. McCain’s qualifications.

[hoosier]

Of course, one could also take the low road, otherwise known as the Tex approach: "If this were Biden's or Obama's daughter who were pregnant, do you really think the Right wouldn't be wringing their hands and making political capital out of it?"

[mraynrand]

Of course, one could also take the low road, otherwise known as the Tex approach: "If this were Biden's or Obama's daughter who were pregnant, do you really think the Right wouldn't be wringing their hands and making political capital out of it?"

Obama's daughter wouldn't be pregnant for long. Obama's already on record that if one of his daughters made a mistake and got pregnant that he wouldn't want her punished with a baby.

As for Biden, I really know nothing of his family, except that one son is a lobbyist who may be under investigation. The press seems to be completely uninterested in his children. Maybe they are not as cute as Obama's girls.

[HowardRoark]

They have their talking point....."vet, vet, vet!!!!!"

Aides Say Team Interviewed Palin Late in the Process

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 3, 2008; A01



ST. PAUL, Minn., Sept. 2 -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person background interview with the head of Sen. John McCain's vice presidential vetting team until last Wednesday in Arizona, the day before McCain asked her to be his running mate, and she did not disclose the fact that her 17-year-old daughter was pregnant until that meeting, two knowledgeable McCain officials acknowledged Tuesday.

It's like when Hillary kept saying she "would not bring up Obama's cocaine use."

[mraynrand]

Look how skewed the title is too

Title: Aides Say Team Interviewed Palin Late in the Process

Content: Sarah Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person background interview


The title spins 'lengthy in-person interview' into suggesting she wasn't interviewed until late in the process, attempting to lead the reader to believe that she wasn't properly 'vetted' (Which was the Democrat talking point the last three days, pushed by all major news outs and also NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS). The truth is that she was vetted on all the critical stuff having to do with governing, but they may have overlooked her daughter's pregnancy until the last day. Maybe Palin didn't want to tell them. They probably told her "The leftist scumbags on Daily Kos won't leave you alone. They will spread vicious rumors and then Alan Colmes and Andrew Sullivan will report them as the truth, only later removing them from their websites, after the damage is done." Then she probably told them and McCain, correctly probably said "I'm not selecting your daughter, I'm selecting you for your work as Governor cleaning up corruption in Alaska's Republican party and Big Oil."

[mraynrand]

Keith Olbermann interviews John McCain: "So senator, when did you stop beating your wife?"

[hoosier]

Look how skewed the title is too

Title: Aides Say Team Interviewed Palin Late in the Process

Content: Sarah Palin was not subjected to a lengthy in-person background interview


The title spins 'lengthy in-person interview' into suggesting she wasn't interviewed until late in the process, attempting to lead the reader to believe that she wasn't properly 'vetted' (Which was the Democrat talking point the last three days, pushed by all major news outs and also NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS). The truth is that she was vetted on all the critical stuff having to do with governing, but they may have overlooked her daughter's pregnancy until the last day. Maybe Palin didn't want to tell them. They probably told her "The leftist scumbags on Daily Kos won't leave you alone. They will spread vicious rumors and then Alan Colmes and Andrew Sullivan will report them as the truth, only later removing them from their websites, after the damage is done." Then she probably told them and McCain, correctly probably said "I'm not selecting your daughter, I'm selecting you for your work as Governor cleaning up corruption in Alaska's Republican party and Big Oil."

That's a laugh, though he may well have said it. We all know the real reason he chose her: cuz the Christian Right would have had a shit fit if he had chosen a pro-choice nominee such as Lieberman or Ridge.

[hoosier]

Of course, one could also take the low road, otherwise known as the Tex approach: "If this were Biden's or Obama's daughter who were pregnant, do you really think the Right wouldn't be wringing their hands and making political capital out of it?"

Obama's daughter wouldn't be pregnant for long. Obama's already on record that if one of his daughters made a mistake and got pregnant that he wouldn't want her punished with a baby.

As for Biden, I really know nothing of his family, except that one son is a lobbyist who may be under investigation. The press seems to be completely uninterested in his children. Maybe they are not as cute as Obama's girls.

Or maybe they don't present the same interesting contrast between Protestant moralizing and teenage sex.