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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:27pm PT
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We may have to discuss real issues on another thread, sadly. And it may have to wait until Tuesday - I'm fairly busy today, and tomorrow is Labour Day. John Salathe rightly asked "Vy can't ve choost go climbing?", and on Labour Day of all days, at the end of the summer, that's just what we should all do. (Even LEB. Especially LEB.)
Little-known facts about Sarah Palin, which at least are facts, although probably irrelevant to the real debate about her qualifications:
1. When he heard about the nomination, her father, Chuck Heath, said "I'd rather go moose hunting than be involved in politics." (I assume he'd approve of climbing, too.)
2. She smoked marijunana in her youth, and inhaled. She claims she didn't enjoy it. (Neither did I.) At the time, marijuana was nominally not illegal under Alaska law.
3. Her husband, Todd Palin, is part Yupik Inuit. What in Canada we call one of our First Peoples. You can't call him a "native American", because it's a contrived euphemism, and can't call him an Indian because Inuit aren't Indians. I believe the U.S.A. had a vice-president in the 1830s or 1840s who was part Cherokee (?). Being husband to the vice-president is worth even less than a pitcher full of warm spit, but his being Inuit has some symbolic value anyway. (Q: Who made the "warm spit" remark, and in what context?)
4. She plans to transplant wolves to all fifty states, so that all can share Alaska's bounty, and to annoy Rokjox. (OK, I made that one up.)
5. Her children have the un-white bread names of Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig. (I should talk.)
6. Her eldest son will be serving in Iraq starting in September. Joe Biden's son will be deployed there in October, and John McCain's son has already been to Iraq. There is no word on whether any of them has or will find bin Laden.
7. To my eye, she uses too much makeup for a woman of her age and beauty. It's ok for Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton to do so - they're 20 years older.
8. Her name is spelt SARAH, not Sara. (Bad skipt!)
9. And she can apparently use a gun much more skilfully than Dick Cheney.
As LEB demonstrates, Palin is clearly red meat to the Republican base. That won't make any difference. Whether she'll make any difference in terms of the key 5-10% of uncommitted voters is the real issue.
Anyway, what DO you think of the candidates' and parties' positions on the environment? The economy? Health care? The economy? Foreign policy? The economy? Education? The economy? Erosion of civil liberties and constitutional rights? Unemployment? Globalization? The economy? Taxation and the deficit? Cleaning up the messes left by Bush et al? The military-political-industrial complex? The economy?
Edit: It looks like Elcapinyoazz wants to join Moosie, jstan, skipt, a few others and me in discussing the issues. Yeah!
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Redlands
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:31pm PT
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8/31: Gallup - Obama +6
8/31: Rasmussen - Obama +3
Nevermind that these nationwide horserace numbers mean diddly. Only poll numbers that really matter are in the 16 up for grab states, and even there turnout will ultimately rule the day.
Nevertheless, Woodenhead sees fit to construct a false narrative re:polls that fit his pre-conceived view that Palin is some smash hit among the electorate. When the hard scrutiny arrives over the next few weeks...on foreign policy, on her actual accomplishments/results or lackthereof in AK, her hard right stances, and the "look a shiny object" novelty wears off, we'll see the actual impacts. I can tell you as someone living in AK during her rise that she didn't exactly leave Wasilla is good financial shape.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:33pm PT
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""Time in service means by definition better qualified."
Just look at park service, where people get promoted because they have been there longer then someone else.
I could go on and on.
Time in service does not mean better qualified and I hope that you can see this Skip. This isn't about ego Skip. I don't think that I am better then you. Please try to take that out of the argument and just look at this logically.
Time in service is a quantifying factor, but it does not necessarily mean better qualified. There are many other factors such as ability, intelligence, wisdom and heart.
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seamus mcshane
climber
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:35pm PT
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Skipt, the only thing she's better qualified to do is change diapers.
Palin's "experience" serves her better as a replacement for Fox News' anchor Laura Ingraham, THE Stepford Wife of Conservatism.
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John Moosie
climber
Beautiful California
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:41pm PT
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"More time in service does mean more qualified. "
You are saying that time is the only thing that counts as a qualification. This is incorrect.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:43pm PT
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No I didn't.
Pull up Zogby yourself and look it over. I was careful to qualify a bit because the poll was a bit confusing. Check the dates though between Zogby and Gallup; I didn't. I further said we'd have to wait a bit to know for sure. To imply I deliberately spun in a dishonest manner, is a lie.
So, Escape, you are a liar.
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coward
Trad climber
Boulder, Wyoming
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:48pm PT
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Woody,
That was absolutely precious - your statement that showed your flawed undertanding of the selection process for Supreme Court Justices.
Congress does not pick the justices; rather, the Senate confirms the President's pick.
It's never too late to educate yourself! Do yourself a favor and read the Constitution. Then you can discuss politics at an adult level.
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Ouch!
climber
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:54pm PT
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Worst president in the history of the republic.
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seamus mcshane
climber
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:54pm PT
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Mary Kay is looking for a new spokeperson, Palin seems to have sufficient qualifications...
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coward
Trad climber
Boulder, Wyoming
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Aug 31, 2008 - 02:58pm PT
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If "time in service" is all there is to look at, then John McCain would indeed be the man for the job. For most of us, thankfully, there is a bit more to look at. What a simplistic point of view you have, Skip.
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:01pm PT
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I somewhat disagree with both skipt and Moosie. Length of service is only a likely indicator of greater experience, skill, and efficiency. It's helpful information, but not a certain thing by any means.
If I knew nothing else whatsoever about two candidates for a position, or was in a large and inflexible bureaucracy, I would naturally take the easy course and simply say longer service = more experience = more skilled = more valuable. But it's not a complete algorithm. There are long-serving people in every field of human endeavour who have been promoted for reasons having little to do with competency, or skill, whatever their experience. In some high-performance occupations and organizations, the linkage is strong and demonstrable. In others, it's not.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:08pm PT
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Coward, how dense you are. The Congress decides whether or not an individual put forth by the President becomes a member of SCOTUS. The President can only put forth the name, all final power is with Congress; ergo, Congress picks/selects the nominee that will go to SCOTUS. Do you always have such difficulty in understanding something so simple?
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Dick_Lugar
Trad climber
Indiana (the other Mideast)
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:15pm PT
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Skip-Too bad your own party doesn't follow your logic on experience or they would have selected Bush I over Reagan in '80 and McCain over Bush II in '00. And experience apparently isn't a final deciding factor for the American voter as shown by Clinton unseating Bush I after one term. I think we've beaten the topic of "experience" to a bloody pulp, let's move on.
edit: "experience" being defined time in the service, foreign policy exp. etc.
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coward
Trad climber
Boulder, Wyoming
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:16pm PT
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Woody - more specifically, the Senate has that oversight. The actual selection of justices is a Presidential power.
McCain, undoubtedly one of the dumbest men to ever run for high office, is sure to make unwise selections to the Supreme Court - he could select an even dumber Supreme Court Justice than Clarence Thomas. Yikes! Talk about dense...
Thankfully, it looks like he shot himself in the foot by selecting this Palin bimbo for his running mate. We'll see how bright she looks alongside him. It's going to be a circus!!!
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WandaFuca
Gym climber
San Fernando Lamas
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:24pm PT
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Damn Woody, your as thick as . . . well, wood.
Pick means choose. The congress doesn't have the power to just pull some name out of their collective asses. They have the power to say, "no"; that's it.
The President picks, decides, chooses, proposes, and selects SCOTUS nominees, and if the congress doesn't say no, then that person--not someone that the majority of congress would pick, decide on, choose, propose, or select if they could--becomes a justice.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:28pm PT
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The President nominates only; Congress has "all" the power to select/pick/confirm, yay or nay. We can play with terminology all we want; Congress makes the decision as to who will go to SCOTUS. The President has no power to put someone on SCOTUS; he can only make a request/nomination.
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WandaFuca
Gym climber
San Fernando Lamas
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:32pm PT
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Congress can't name someone. They don't even get a list or pool of choices.
edit:
All power to confirm the President's pick/selection. Congress has no power to pick/select because this implies the ability to choose, not just yes/no, but to choose between/among candidates.
edit-edit:
This isn't playing with terminology; this is basic critical thinking.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Redlands
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:33pm PT
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And the scrutiny begins:
"PALIN FLIP FLOPPED ON BRIDGE TO NOWHERE FUNDS
Tom Kizza | Anchorage Daily News
When John McCain introduced Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate Friday, her reputation as a tough-minded budget-cutter was front and center.
"I told Congress, thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere," Palin told the cheering McCain crowd, referring to Ketchikan's Gravina Island bridge.
But Palin was for the Bridge to Nowhere before she was against it.
The Alaska governor campaigned in 2006 on a build-the-bridge platform, telling Ketchikan residents she felt their pain when politicians called them "nowhere." They're still feeling pain today in Ketchikan, over Palin's subsequent decision to use the bridge funds for other projects -- and over the timing of her announcement, which they say came in a pre-dawn press release that seemed aimed at national news deadlines.
"I think that's when the campaign for national office began," said Ketchikan Mayor Bob Weinstein on Saturday.
Meanwhile, Weinstein noted, the state is continuing to build a road on Gravina Island to an empty beach where the bridge would have gone -- because federal money for the access road, unlike the bridge money, would have otherwise been returned to the federal government.
ADVERTISEMENT Click here to find out more! It's a more complicated picture than the one drawn by McCain, a persistent critic of special-interest spending and congressional earmarks. He described Palin as "someone who's stopped government from wasting taxpayers' money on things they don't want or need."
McCain also claimed to have found, in Palin, "someone with an outstanding reputation for standing up to special interests and entrenched bureaucracies" and "someone who has fought against corruption and the failed policies of the past" and "someone who has reached across the aisle and asked Republicans, Democrats and independents to serve in government." On those scores, Palin can fairly claim credit, according to Alaska political leaders and others who have followed her career here.
She did fight corruption as a whistle-blower, even before an FBI investigation burst into public view. She also stood up to "party bosses," as McCain claimed, running against Republican incumbents as an outsider -- though she has yet to unseat her nemesis, Randy Ruedrich, as state party chairman.
Palin told the crowd she had signed a major ethics law -- an appropriately modest claim, because although she pushed for the ethics changes, the main impetus had come from state legislators, especially minority Democrats.
COST-CUTTING CONSERVATIVE?
The trickiest defense of Palin in the national spotlight involves her reputation as a budget-cutting fiscal conservative.
Part of that reputation comes from her political rhetoric, beginning with her years as mayor of Wasilla. But while Palin made controversial cuts at the local museum in Wasilla and battled library expansion, she oversaw a fast-growing town with a fast-growing budget to match.
As with much of Palin's sun-kissed career, her timing was ideal: She was able to cut property taxes by three-fourths because sales tax revenues from the city's new big-box stores were soaring. She even pushed for a sales tax increase to build a pet project, a new sports complex for ice hockey.
Similarly, as governor, she has presided over a state flooded with new oil revenues, brought by high oil prices and a new tax regime she pushed over industry objections. She vetoed $268 million in state capital projects this year, but her cuts came out of an unusually swollen capital budget.
"It would be hard not to appear conservative with the huge budget approved by the majority," said Rep. Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau, the House minority leader.
Palin and the Legislature both were criticized by some conservatives for not making more effort to slow growth in the state's operating budget.
At the same time, Palin deserves credit for trying to impose some objective criteria on the capital budget, which is essentially a huge exercise in earmarking by individual legislators, said Sen. Fred Dyson, R-Eagle River.
"I thought she showed some guts in doing that and really irritated some folks," said Dyson, adding that he disagreed with some of her decisions.
BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
But it is the federally funded Bridge to Nowhere in Ketchikan that seems destined to make or break Palin's national reputation as a cost-cutting conservative.
The bridge was intended to provide access to Ketchikan's airport on lightly populated Gravina Island, opening up new territory for expansion at the same time. Alaska's congressional delegation endured withering criticism for earmarking $223 million for Ketchikan and a similar amount for a crossing of Knik Arm at Anchorage.
Congress eventually removed the earmark language but the money still went to Alaska, leaving it up to the administration of then-Gov. Frank Murkowski to decide whether to go ahead with the bridges or spend the money on something else.
In September, 2006, Palin showed up in Ketchikan on her gubernatorial campaign and said the bridge was essential for the town's prosperity.
She said she could feel the town's pain at being derided as a "nowhere" by prominent politicians, noting that her home town, Wasilla, had recently been insulted by the state Senate president, Ben Stevens.
"OK, you've got Valley trash standing here in the middle of nowhere," Palin said, according to an account in the Ketchikan Daily News. "I think we're going to make a good team as we progress that bridge project."
One year later, Ketchikan's Republican leaders said they were blindsided by Palin's decision to pull the plug.
Palin spokeswoman Sharon Leighow said Saturday that as projected costs for the Ketchikan bridge rose to nearly $400 million, administration officials were telling Ketchikan that the project looked less likely. Local leaders shouldn't have been surprised when Palin announced she was turning to less-costly alternatives, Leighow said. Indeed, Leighow produced a report quoting Palin, late in the governor's race, indicating she would also consider alternatives to a bridge.
CHANGE OF VIEW
Andrew Halcro, who ran against Palin in 2006, told The Associated Press on Saturday that Palin changed her views after she was elected to make a national splash.
Mayor Weinstein said many residents remain irked by Palin's failure to come to Ketchikan since that time to defend her decision -- despite promises that she would.
Weinstein may be especially sore -- he helped run the local campaign of Palin's 2006 Democratic rival, Tony Knowles. But comments this week from area Republicans show bitterness there too.
Bert Stedman, a Sitka Republican who represents Ketchikan in the state Senate, told the Ketchikan Daily News he was proud to see Palin picked for the vice-president's role, but disheartened by her reference to the bridge.
"In the role of governor, she should be pursuing a transportation policy that benefits the state of Alaska, (rather than) pandering to the southern 48," he said.
Businessman Mike Elerding, who helped run Palin's local campaign for governor, told the paper he would have a hard time voting for the McCain ticket because of Palin's subsequent neglect of Ketchikan and her flip-flop on the "Ralph Bartholomew Veterans Memorial Bridge."
TIMING OF PRESS RELEASE
Palin's 2007 press release announcing her change of course came just a month after McCain himself slammed the Ketchikan bridge for taking money that could have been used to shore up dangerous bridges like one that collapsed in Minnesota.
Leighow said she had no record of what time she sent out the press release, but does not recall being told to send it out early for East Coast media.
Once Palin spiked the bridge project, the money wasn't available to Minnesota or other states, however. Congress, chastened by criticism of the Alaska funding, had removed the earmark but allowed the state to keep the money and direct it to other transportation projects.
Enhanced ferry access to Gravina Island is one option under consideration, the state said.
Meanwhile, work is under way on a three-mile road on Gravina Island, originally meant to connect the airport and the new bridge. State officials said last year they were going ahead with the $25 million road because the money would otherwise have to be returned to the federal government.
Leighow said the road project was already under way last year when Palin stopped the bridge, and she noted that it would provide benefits of opening up new territory for development -- one of the original arguments made for the bridge spending."
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Mighty Hiker
Social climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:41pm PT
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Hmmm, doesn't anyone read your constitution?
The President has the constitutional legal power to nominate justices of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, cabinet ministers, and many other senior officers of state. The congress can only approve or reject the nominees - it has no power of its own to nominate anyone.
It's somewhat more nuanced, of course, and political and practical considerations are part of it. The president usually gets a fairly free ride with the necessary package of appointments on coming into office, and usually has advice on whether a candidate is competent and credible, and likely to be approved. A president wanting to pick fights or appease his 'base' naturally throws in a few nominees who push the envelope. The major appointments get more scrutiny than lesser ones, and appointments part way through a term also get more attention.
The president proposes, congress disposes.
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Terry
climber
Spokane
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Aug 31, 2008 - 03:46pm PT
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Puh-Leaze, enough already on the pick/chose SCOTUS/Congress/POTUS issue. We get it already, ok. Stop trying to have the last word.
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