About Sarah Palin: A Letter From Anne Kilkenny

[Dinner]

Originally posted by GePap

Damn NYU kids ruin the whole experience of the Village.

If it matters I really liked the village though the college douches do kind of ruin it.

[Ming]

Enough with the personal crap... Discuss the topic and NOT THE POSTERS! Argue all you want, but enough with the personal attacks.

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

It's got a good film school, I'll give it that. But really, it doesn't hold a candle to Columbia and Cornell. And outside of the US, it's. . .well. . .it's another American school. But you're trying to make it sound like I'm trashing the school. I'm not. It's a well respected school.

Uh, Cornell especially isn't that great a school.

Why not?

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


You are a legend in your own mind.

Well, you're the one with a sudden interest in what I'm posting here. You've not done that before and the only thing that's changed is your embarrassment before. I say your, because I want to be clear that I did not embarrass you, nor was it my intention. You brought that upon yourself.

It is nice to see you running away from your fact claims. I don't see him claiming he never linked to partisan websites in this thread either... just that Factcheck isn't one.

Now who's changing the argument? Seriously, Imran. I don't have time to humor your petty grudges. Take it like a man and let it go. Or be like Wiglaf and take it up the arse.

That's a very different thing. I find no reason to disclaim left leaning blogs who are reporting what others said or linking to other stories.

Really? Even I do. But critical thinking does seem to be sorely missing on this forum.

It was only 30th in the Shanghai Jiao Tong ranking of the World's Best Universities (2007). I'd think being even in the Top 100 Universities in the world qualify as "great".

How sad that you're reduced to semantics. Fine, I apologize for hurting you. I didn't think you'd be such a baby over it.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by DaShi
Well, you're the one with a sudden interest in what I'm posting here. You've not done that before and the only thing that's changed is your embarrassment before. I say your, because I want to be clear that I did not embarrass you, nor was it my intention. You brought that upon yourself.

If thinking that helps you sleep better at night.

Now who's changing the argument? Seriously, Imran. I don't have time to humor your petty grudges. Take it like a man and let it go. Or be like Wiglaf and take it up the arse.

I can go post by post on this thread if you'd like, showing that Naked was referring to Factcheck, was jumped on by Oerdin, who was wrong (as he is often), and then you came in talking about partisan websites and treating them like fact. Suffice to say, you don't come up looking good on this one.

Really? Even I do. But critical thinking does seem to be sorely missing on this forum.

If it is a quote, you question if its factually accurate someone said what was quoted? Wow.

How sad that you're reduced to semantics. Fine, I apologize for hurting you. I didn't think you'd be such a baby over it.

Facts = semantics. I see. Now that you've lost, run away again.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui


If thinking that helps you sleep better at night.

Well, you're pretty upset with this. Naked's been fairly silent on the issue, and it's about him. You, however, seem to have an axe to grind. I'm just saying.

I can go post by post on this thread if you'd like, showing that Naked was referring to Factcheck, was jumped on by Oerdin, who was wrong (as he is often), and then you came in talking about partisan websites and treating them like fact. Suffice to say, you don't come up looking good on this one.

Wow, you take everything personal, don't you? The point is that Naked was using those quotes as facts to support McCain's story. The site he sourced was dubious as were the quotes. Thus, he was using biased sources as facts. He seems to be aware that it happened and has let it go. I would have to, if you didn't have your panties in a twist over it. And Oerdin has very little to do with this. So it's clear that all you're interested in is making personal attacks.

If it is a quote, you question if its factually accurate someone said what was quoted? Wow.

I guess your right. Quotes and never been misquoted. Plus, they are all factually accurate. People never say anything biased. I'm sorry. What was I thinking?

It's just getting crazy now.

Facts = semantics. I see. Now that you've lost, run away again.

You're ignorant too? And yes, I am going to run away from this nonsensical discussion with you that seems only to be a ruse for personal attacks. I'm done with it. Live in your own little fantasy world where words mean only what you want them to mean. I've said all that needs to be said on my end.

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Oerdin




Actually this place has been boring me more and more. I find now days I can barely bring myself to come her without being drunk. As for the taunting of some Chinese douche? Hell, I go home each night to my home in a Southern California beach community, I have a BMW, a good job, and a girlfriend who loves me. Life is good. While after he finishes his over seas schooling he has to go back to a dirty smoggy city in China.

I can't help but feel I got the better end of that deal. I'm out.

This has to be one of the saddest posts I have ever seen.

JM

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by DaShi
Well, you're pretty upset with this. Naked's been fairly silent on the issue, and it's about him. You, however, seem to have an axe to grind. I'm just saying.

People who constantly lie and misrepresent get on my nerves. Ask Oerdin.

The point is that Naked was using those quotes as facts to support McCain's story. The site he sourced was dubious as were the quotes. Thus, he was using biased sources as facts.

He was submitting the quotes in support. He merely found them on a biased site. If the quotes were on CNN, you would have no problem with them? Why, if they are the same quotes?

I guess your right. Quotes and never been misquoted. Plus, they are all factually accurate. People never say anything biased. I'm sorry. What was I thinking?

Are you claiming the quotes are incorrect or there was a misquote?

Then why does it matter if they were on a biased site? If quotes are correctly stated, it doesn't matter does it. Its like saying he posted from a biased site quoting Bush saying "On 9/11 the twin towers fell down" and yelling at him because he's treating something on a biased site as fact.

yes, I am going to run away from this nonsensical discussion with you that seems only to be a ruse for personal attacks. I'm done with it. Live in your own little fantasy world where words mean only what you want them to mean. I've said all that needs to be said on my end.

Yes, yes... run away, as your argument has blown up in your face. Go, go.

[Naked Gents Rut]

Well, you're pretty upset with this. Naked's been fairly silent on the issue, and it's about him.

That's because I don't care what you think of me.

[DaShi]

Good for you.

[Asher]

Yes! Matt Damon is
1) Hot
2) A good actor
3) Intelligent!
4) Spot on right here. "Really bad Disney movie" is spot on.

[Aeson]

A Matt Damon youtube video without Sara Silverman or Jimmy Kimmel involved ... this is what politics does ...

[Asher]

http://www.thestar.com/USElection/article/498680

Palin's track record marked by bitter clashes

WASILLA, ALASKA –Twelve years before she became America's right-wing sweetheart, Sarah Palin rode another wave of "change" to power.

Immediately after her election as mayor, the self-described pit bull ran into trouble in this tiny community tucked into Alaska's Matanuska-Susitna Valley, sparking a colourful internecine political battle. It was remarkable even by the intense, incestuous standards of America's Last Frontier.

John McCain's Republican presidential running mate arrived as mayor already facing allegations she had introduced conservative social issues – including her anti-abortion position – into the mayoral campaign. She even questioned why the incumbent mayor's wife still used her maiden name.

As mayor, she fired administrators, gagged others and tried to move a museum out of the downtown.

She mused about banning books, was accused of being in the pocket of the National Rifle Association, dissolved a commission seeking ways to improve the city's problem with drinking and driving, and faced charges she had tried to break laws to put her supporters on council. On Day 120 of her administration, the first day such a move was allowed by law, she faced an incipient recall movement.

Today, some of the adversaries of the 44-year-old hockey mom and Alaska governor say she has grown and they have come to admire her.

Others never will, and find the prospect of Palin potentially a heart beat from the U.S. presidency as frightening.

Her journey to today as the most talked about politician in the U.S. began Oct. 1, 1996, when she won 616 votes, enough to win election as Wasilla's mayor.

Immediately, Wasilla's local newspaper, The Frontiersman, publicly worried about the new leadership being "too deeply entrenched in the conservative agenda."

One by one, city officials who had backed defeated incumbent mayor John Stein felt the wrath of "Sarah Barracuda" as she began to fire department heads.

"It's not rocket science," she said of running Wasilla. "It's $6 million and 53 employees."

When the Wasilla newspaper accused newly minted Mayor Palin of trying to break laws to stack council with her supporters she called it "brilliant manoeuvering" on her part, before backing down.

Four months later, The Frontiersman editorialized that she thought her election was a coronation.

"Welcome to Kingdom Palin," it wrote, "the land of no accountability."

She stared down her opponents and brazened her way through her first mayoral year, an early performance that foreshadowed this week's interview with ABC's Charlie Gibson in which she fixed her steely gaze on her interlocutor and told him she "never blinked" when McCain asked her to be his running mate.

"I have never cared for Sarah's style of campaigning, but she has always had a dedicated base behind her and I find that worrisome," said Darlene Langill, who served on city council during the first year of the Palin administration.

Langill, a fiscal conservative, butted heads with Palin on financial and administrative issues.

"She and her backers are borderline extreme conservatives," Langill said. "They think only their way is the right way and if you question that, you will feel the backlash.

"I define extremists as those who push their agenda on others."

Linda Beller, a member of the Wasilla Historical Society, also bucked Palin when she tried to move a museum from the downtown, claiming it was costing Wasilla $16.79 every time a visitor walked through the museum door.

At the time, a defiant Beller said: "You can't put a price tag on a museum and what it offers the community."

Beller won.

Palin ultimately backed down, and Beller's views of the former mayor and vice-presidential candidate have mellowed.

"My first impression was, `Oh my God, who is this little punk?'" Beller recalled. "I didn't understand where she thought she had anything to give this community."

Today, Beller still differs with Palin on abortion – Beller is pro-choice – and she has a non-uniformed niece stationed in Iraq but cannot support the war.

Yet, as she watched Palin in action as mayor, "I saw her core values," Beller said.

"She's one of us.

"I really do admire her and I didn't always sit on this side of the fence."

Palin showed a populist streak that endeared her to many voters.

She cut her $68,000 salary by 10 per cent, saying such a stipend for the mayor of such a small community was "embarrassing."

She kept a jar on her desk filled with the phone numbers of Wasilla residents and would pull a name out each day and call to ask how things were going.

She would have coffee with the town's old-timers at 6 a.m. at The Country Kitchen on Main St.

She keeps that populist streak to this day, said Dan Michael, the assistant principal at Wasilla High, "Home of the Warriors" where the then Sarah Heath led the girls' basketball team to a state championship in 1982.

"She's pretty transparent," said Michael as he leafed through that 1982 school yearbook, the same book he has shown to reporters from around the United States, the BBC, Al-Jazeera and news outlets from Norway, Germany and Japan.

All stop to scribble down her inscription from that year: "He is the Light and in the Light there is Life."

"I know there is a lot of digging going on, but she's got the trust of the people up here," Michael said.

Still, behind the populist streak was a draconian bent.

Three days after her election as mayor she dissolved the city's Liquor Task Force and won plaudits and campaign contributions from The Wasilla Bar and The Mug Shot who were allowed to stay open later – even though drunken patrons were driving home to nearby Anchorage where bars closed earlier.

"We were just starting to connect with the bar owners and getting more public awareness about alcohol problems," Michelle Overstreet, co-ordinator of the Mat-Su Council Outreach program, said at the time. "It's a shame some kind of power trip could end that."

Under Palin, Wasilla was the only community in Alaska which forced rape victims to pay for their own medical exams, former Governor Tony Knowles, a Democrat, told reporters here this week.

Knowles signed a bill outlawing the practice eight years ago as a direct response to Palin's policy.

But Palin's major confrontations the first year were with the fired police chief Irl Stambaugh and chief librarian Mary Ellen Emmons.

Today, both matters are shrouded in gossip and selective memories.

Stambaugh, the town's first police chief, sued for $275,000, a suit he ultimately lost.

He claimed he was fired for his backing of ex-mayor Stein, his opposition to a concealed weapons law Palin backed and his opposition to the extended bar hours.

He alleged Palin secretly told him the NRA had wanted her to fire him and also claimed "gender discrimination" because Palin had said publicly the much larger Stambaugh had tried to "intimidate" her at meetings.

The Emmons controversy had its roots with Palin twice inquiring about banning books in Wasilla, something she said she had raised only "rhetorically."

Nobody would discuss which books Palin wanted to ban.

Emmons said at the time Palin raised the censorship issue with her twice in the days after her election, including a pointed question about how she would deal with the issue even if people were picketing the library.

"She asked me if I would object to censorship, and I replied `yup,'" Emmons said at the time.

"And I told her it would not be just me. This was a constitutional question and the American Civil Liberties Union would get involved, too."

[Wiglaf]

Originally posted by Asher


Yes! Matt Damon is
1) Hot
2) A good actor
3) Intelligent!
4) Spot on right here. "Really bad Disney movie" is spot on.

Any respect you ever deserved has just been vaporized.

MATTT....DAAAAMON

I love the fact that he blasts Palin for being governor for less than 2 years. Obama was a senator for less than two when he endorsed him.

[Wiglaf]

MATTT DAMON