I fear McCain is going to win

[Jon Miller]

I am afraid that the GOP plan will be to sell it cheap to oil companies.

Which won't benefit me or anyone who isn't a stockholder of those oil companies at all.

JM

[Agathon]

Originally posted by -Jrabbit
I object to the use of the term "Bush Doctrine."

It implies that he had a plan, perhaps even a philosophy.

He does. His thesis is "appearance is reality", or for more unsophisticated readers "If you believe it hard enough, it is true".

[Agathon]

This is some funny shiat

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


It will do plenty in the short term. It will make money.

It will also take resources that could also be used to solve the problem, and give stupid republicans a confidence that the problem is being solved.

[Guynemer]

Latest fivethirtyeight.com projections have McCain winning with 290 EV. The Dems are, as I predicted over and over and over and over again, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It is in their ****ing DNA.

[Kidlicious]

Here's more information on Palin's lack of experience. Her experience as Mayor of that small Alaskan town isn't worth ****. She once said so herselfl.

The universe of the mayor of Wasilla is sharply circumscribed even by the standards of small towns, which limited Palin's exposure to issues such as health care, social services, the environment and education.

Firefighting and schools, two of the main elements of local governance, are handled by the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, the regional government for a huge swath of central Alaska. The state has jurisdiction over social services and environmental regulations such as stormwater management for building projects.

Low property tax rate
With so many government services in the state subsidized by oil revenue, and with no need to provide for local schools, Wasilla has also made do with a very low property tax rate -- cut altogether by Palin's successor -- sparing it from the tax battles that localities elsewhere must deal with. Instead, the city collects a 2 percent sales tax, the bulk of which is paid by people who live outside town and shop at its big-box stores.

The mayor oversees a police department created three years before Palin took office; the public works department; the parks and recreation department; a planning office; a library; and a small history museum. Council meetings are in the low-ceilinged basement of the town hall, a former school, and often the only residents who show up to testify are two gadflies. When Palin was mayor, the population was just 5,500.

Palin limited her duties further by hiring a deputy administrator to handle much of the town's day-to-day management. Her top achievement as mayor was the construction of an ice rink, a project that landed in the courts and cost the city more than expected.

'It's not rocket science'
Arriving in office, Palin herself played down the demands of the job in response to residents who worried that her move to oust veteran officials would leave the town in the lurch. "It's not rocket science," Palin said, according to the town newspaper, the Frontiersman. "It's $6 million and 53 employees."

Further constraining City Hall's role is the frontier philosophy that has prevailed in Wasilla, a town that was founded in 1917 as a stop along the new railroad from Anchorage to the gold mines further north. The light hand of government is evident in the town's commercial core, essentially a haphazard succession of big-box stores, fast-food restaurants and shopping plazas.

Palin cut own duties as mayor of Wasilla

This election should be about the economy and the war. McCain is a piece of ****. Anyone who thinks he's a hero is an idiot.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

Gibson: What do you interpret the Bush Doctrine to be?

Palin: His world view you mean?

She doesn't know what foreign policy doctrine is.

Isn't Bush's foreign policy doctrine his world view?

You know, I'm no fan of Charles Krauthammer by any means but I have to admit he (as the origin of the four-pronged and repeatedly changing "doctrine") totally hammered Gibson on that point:

Charlie Gibson's Gaffe
By Charles Krauthammer
September 13, 2008

"Ms. Palin most visibly stumbled when she was asked by Mr. Gibson if she agreed with the Bush doctrine. Ms. Palin did not seem to know what he was talking about. Mr. Gibson, sounding like an impatient teacher, informed her that it meant the right of `anticipatory self-defense.'" -- New York Times, Sept. 12

WASHINGTON -- Informed her? Rubbish.

The Times got it wrong. And Charlie Gibson got it wrong.

There is no single meaning of the Bush doctrine. In fact, there have been four distinct meanings, each one succeeding another over the eight years of this administration -- and the one Charlie Gibson cited is not the one in common usage today.

He asked Palin, "Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?"

She responded, quite sensibly to a question that is ambiguous, "In what respect, Charlie?"

Sensing his "gotcha" moment, Gibson refused to tell her. After making her fish for the answer, he grudgingly explained to the moose-hunting rube that the Bush doctrine "is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense."

Wrong.

I know something about the subject because, as the Wikipedia entry on the Bush doctrine notes, I was the first to use the term. In the cover essay of the June 4, 2001, issue of The Weekly Standard titled, "The Bush Doctrine: ABM, Kyoto, and the New American Unilateralism," I suggested that the Bush administration policies of unilaterally withdrawing from the ABM treaty and rejecting the Kyoto protocol, together with others, amounted to a radical change in foreign policy that should be called the Bush doctrine.

Then came 9/11, and that notion was immediately superseded by the advent of the war on terror. In his address to Congress nine days later, Bush declared: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime." This "with us or against us" policy regarding terror -- first deployed against Pakistan when Secretary of State Colin Powell gave President Musharraf that seven-point ultimatum to end support for the Taliban and support our attack on Afghanistan -- became the essence of the Bush Doctrine.

Until Iraq. A year later, when the Iraq War was looming, Bush offered his major justification by enunciating a doctrine of pre-emptive war. This is the one Charlie Gibson thinks is the Bush doctrine.

It's not. It's the third in a series and was superseded by the fourth and current definition of the Bush doctrine, the most sweeping formulation of Bush foreign policy and the one that most distinctively defines it: the idea that the fundamental mission of American foreign policy is to spread democracy throughout the world. It was most dramatically enunciated in Bush's second inaugural address: "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."

This declaration of a sweeping, universal American freedom agenda was consciously meant to echo John Kennedy's pledge that the United States "shall pay any price, bear any burden ... to assure the survival and the success of liberty." It draws also from the Truman doctrine of March 1947 and from Wilson's 14 points.

If I were in any public foreign policy debate today, and my adversary were to raise the Bush doctrine, both I and the audience would assume -- unless my interlocutor annotated the reference otherwise -- that he was speaking about Bush's grandly proclaimed (and widely attacked) freedom agenda.

Not the Gibson doctrine of pre-emption.

Not the "with us or against us" no-neutrality-is-permitted policy of the immediate post-9/11 days.

Not the unilateralism that characterized the pre-9/11 first year of the Bush administration.

Presidential doctrines are inherently malleable and difficult to define. The only fixed "doctrines" in American history are the Monroe and the Truman doctrines, which came out of single presidential statements during administrations where there were few conflicting foreign policy crosscurrents.

Such is not the case with the Bush doctrine.

Yes, Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know -- while he looked down his nose and over his glasses with weary disdain, "sounding like an impatient teacher," as the Times noted. In doing so, he captured perfectly the establishment snobbery and intellectual condescension that has characterized the chattering classes' reaction to the phenom who presumes to play on their stage.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art...ons_gaffe.html

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Darius871
Yes, Palin didn't know what it is. But neither does Gibson. And at least she didn't pretend to know

Who cares what Gibson knows? The point is Palin didn't have a clue. Her answer points to teh fact that she has no idea what is going on in the world.

[Darius871]

No disagreement there; I just found it funny that he tried to look any smarter than she is.

Though with some spin her answer could easily be folded into the 4th version. Or it could be said that the so-called "doctrine" is so shifting and malleable that it's not a doctrine at all, in which case talking about his broader worldview would be a smarter answer than pretending it's something narrow & concrete when it really isn't.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Darius871
No disagreement there; I just found it funny that he tried to look any smarter than she is.

Though with some spin her answer could easily be folded into the 4th version. Or it could be said that the so-called "doctrine" is so shifting and malleable that it's not a doctrine at all, in which case talking about his worldview would be a smarter answer than pretending it's something concrete when it really isn't.

Here's the thing though, we should assume that she was trying to impress voters, to show them how much she knows, and that she is capable of being president of the US. With that answer she should have failed miserably, but the fact is that the right doesn't give a **** about whether or not she could be president or not. They don't seem to care about the economy and foreign policy.

[Darius871]

I don't know if we should "assume" that; "impressing voters" and "deflecting heavy criticism" are at least slightly different.

In any case, what politician isn't trying to appeal to voters? That simple fact shouldn't somehow accentuate a gaffe.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Darius871
I don't know if we should "assume" that; "impressing voters" and "deflecting heavy criticism" are at least slightly different.

IMO the crucial issue is whether or not she's qualified, especially since McCain has made it an issue with Obama.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Darius871
In any case, what politician isn't trying to appeal to voters? That simple fact shouldn't somehow accentuate a gaffe.

I'm just saying that it shouldn't be down played because she was intending to show the world what she knows about foreign policy. If if were just a casual conversation that would be different.

Again, if you were interviewing her for a job what would you think about an answer like that.

[Darius871]

Originally posted by Kidicious


IMO the crucial issue is whether or not she's qualified, especially since McCain has made it an issue with Obama.

Saying the 1st spot on your ticket is more qualified than the 2nd spot on their ticket is always a losing argument, even if you win. You were correct earlier that the VP's experience doesn't mean **** to most voters, and considering what an utterly meaningless post the VP is, I don't care much either, even if McCain is marginally more likely to kick the bucket than someone 46. Let's get back to the two guys that actually matter.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Darius871
Saying the 1st spot on your ticket is more qualified than the 2nd spot on their ticket is always a losing argument, even if you win. You were correct earlier that the VP's experience doesn't mean **** to most voters, and considering what an utterly meaningless post the VP is, I don't care much either, even if McCain is marginally more likely to kick the bucket than someone 46. Let's get back to the two guys that actually matter.

Who is your VP certainly isn't meaningless. It's extremely important. We don't want another clueless idiot becoming president again. Or worse someone with a redneck worldview.

But anyway, choosing Palin has created a boost for McCain. People like her, instead of just not caring. That's what I call stupid, reckless and careless. Well they do care, but it seems to be that they care about all the wrong things.