If you liked Phyllis Schaffley, you'll love Sarah Palin!

I think there's much merit to your caution, Sara. I find my own initial knee-jerk dismissal of McCain's selection as proof of his own unfitness fading into an uneasy feeling that he may have tapped into a vein that as a man I may not understand as well as perhaps I should. Despite significant differences with her ideology, it's indeed possible that enough women disappointed in Hillary's not being on the Democratic ticket (either place) might become defensive if Sarah Palin, a successful and bright (though for the most part horribly wrong) woman is treated as simply a young fresh pretty face noticed by a 72 year old male. (Just ask McCain's first wife who says his abandoning of her was due mostly to his wanting to act like a 25 year old again.) I think in the end McCain's move will be seen for what it is.....sheer and perhaps desparate pandering to the Rightous Right, but the target has to be on McCain's judgement, not Palin's deficiencies.

And then I muse about what would happen if Joe Biden suddenly decided he really would rather stay in the Senate after all and continue to communte daily on Amtrack. In 1972 under somewhat different circumstances a post-convention Democratic National Committee named Sargeant Shriver to replace Tom Eagleton.

A September surprise that would make Gustav look like a a summer breeze. It won't happen but let us old MSNBC-CNN junkies have some harmless recreation.

I don't see Palin getting Hillary voters excited, Don, rather... I see her getting a lot of people who were on the edge about Obama thinking, damn, McCain IS that moderate we thought him to be.

that's what scares me the most.

I still think that this is proof of McCain's unfitness, even though that's definitely not the best strategy here for Obama or Democrats. Even if she's a great political pick, that's just more of GWB: politicize everything and forget about sound policy, experience, and qualifications.

There is merit to his decision though, politically. But something tells me that if Rove didn't make his phone calls, it would have been Leiberman.

Watching the different media today and how they handled her selection made me think they were going kinda easy on her.Sure there was some mention of her lack of national experience but then it was mentioned she has more executive experience as governor of Alaska than McCain,Biden or Obama.I'm wondering how the media will handle her and when and if they take the gloves off.

Sarah Palin, from what little I have seen or read, seems to have the down-home personality which has been winning presidential elections since 1976: Carter, Reagan, Clinton, GW Bush all had the persona of being an ordinary guy, someone who knew what it was like to be in your situation, someone who understood [i]you[/i]. George the First is an exception to the rule, but arguably he won his election due his proximity to Reagan.

I think the attempt to portray Obama as an elitist or as a celebrity is an attempt to deny him from following this winning strategy. McCain would have had a hard time fitting into this everyman/everywoman role, but Palin gives him that appeal.

I agree with Sara, we have good reason to be concerned with Palin's selection.

This woman scares me because she has pretty decent odds of becoming the next president of the United States within the next four years.

Think about it. McCain appears to be even in the polls with Obama. His odds of dying in the next four years are fairly high because of his age and condition.

My math skills aren't too good on this kind of thing but given the above, I think we should be very afraid.

I agree completely that this isn't going to be the cakewalk most Dems seem to think it will be. It was a very savvy pick. Unless McCain or Palin make a major screw up, we could be in trouble.

Everybody seems to think that the "scandals" in Alaska will do her in. Her troubles in Alaska are nothing compared to the muck McCain has been wallowing in. Unless something else turns up about her that is truly horrendous, America is going to like her.

America looks at the picture, listens to 10 seconds of the sound byte, and makes up its mind. I think it's just possible she'll win people over . . . I'm seriously worried--cross your fingers and work like the devil for the Dem ticket . . . .

If using her being gov. for executive experience, shouldn't we point out that dubya had more executive experience as gov. of TX before he stole his first election. Look where that experience got us.

Sara, the difference between Quale and Palin is who proceeded them as president. Reagan was popular and Bush I got in on his reputation dragging pretty boy Quale with him.

We should stick to our talking points, tell the truth and keep our confidence.

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“Politics by publicity stunt” epitomizes American politics, where gimmickry is used to trivialize and deflect thinking from the real needs of working people. TV’s 'chattering class' has created a whole industry using talk show babble to spin and spin and spin. On Election Day the voters largely ignore them. Voters are avidly watching for a chance at real change but that’s not what they’re offered.

In 2000 voters Americans were hungry for change after eight years of Slick Willies NAFTA, DOMA and DADT. They wanted to avoid widening Clinton’s war against Iraq. Gore, an inept, warmed over Clinton clone caused kept voters at home on election day by the millions. Bush stole the election. Nader, like Gore was too timid and his campaign never broke through the anti-democratic electoral roadblocks set up by Democrats.

2004 was a rehash of 2000, except that Bush won in his own right using same sex marriage as a wedge issue. No one trusted Kerry and the Democrats because they wouldn’t commit themselves to ending the war, ending bigotry, or taking real measures to improve our standard of living. They flipped and flopped and the voters stayed home again.

The Democrats lost both elections because they're rightwing Republicans in drag.

Below are examples of the kind of program that people would be happy to vote for but you won’t find anything remotely like it in the platforms of Obama or McCain.

1.Permanent, immediate and total withdrawal of all US military, espionage and mercenary forces in the Middle East and East Asia to US home bases. ‘End the War, Draft Politicians’

2. Cut the U.S. purse stings that pay for the apartheid system used against Palestinians.

3. Socialized medicine financed by taxes on the rich and the confiscation of the excess profits insurance companies, HMOs and Big Pharma. No more dividend checks for the rich until health care is free for all working people, including immigrants. ”We want a Congressional health care package for everyone”

4. End tax breaks, tax cuts and funding of ‘faith based’ charities for superstitious cults, i.e., churches.

5. We need a tough inclusive ENDA and housing law making it easy to win big judgments from discriminatory employers for ourselves and others.

6. We need a tough federal law imposing harsh federal sentences on political groups, cults and individuals convicted of hate crimes by criminalizing hate speech that leads to violence and that deliberately spreads misinformation about HIV.

7. We need a constitutional guarantee of a minimum wage of $25.00 an hour with full benefits, adjusted to account for inflation. “$25 an hour or fight!”

8. We need a federal law cutting the work week to 32 hours for forty hours of pay with time and a half after 32 hours, and double time after eight hours in any day or 40 hours in any week.

9. Repeal all the Free Trade Agreements. FTA’s are designed to impoverish working people and farmers and make the rich richer. They cause environmental disasters.

10. We need a law guaranteeing twenty days of paid vacation annually pluspaid federal holidays plus paid sick leave as prescribed by a doctor, including a year of paid maternity leave, from day one.

11. We need tough federal laws to protect workers who lose, or have lost their jobs because of outsourcing or efforts to control pollution. The law should guarantee their reeducation, relocation and provide full income and benefits until they take a new job. The costs should be paid entiresly from a 100% tax on the excess profits and dividends of pollutors and those who export jobs.

12. We need laws that protect immigrant/imported workers at the same level as native workers. “¡SI, SE PUEDE!

These modest, entirely reasonable goals are anathema to Obama and McCain and their parties.

It’s unprincipled and wrong headed to waste our time, money or votes on either. Katrina, poverty, the blight of bigotry and unending wars are the price we pay for political impotence, for being ensnared in the two party trap.

On November 4th vote for the US Labor Party (if it makes it past the Democrat's (sic) roadblocks). If not vote for socialist or communist candidates as a protest or join the scores of millions who sit it out because they’re smart enough to refuse to vote for the lesser bigot, the lesser warmonger or the lesser evil.

Dear Kim,

If we can harness your powers for good all these problems are solvable. Obviously you have crossed the line of both good taste and form. Addiction is nothing to condemn one for and I doubt that the known fact that senator McCain cannot raise his arms above the height of his shoulders came from eating too much cake.

I don't call the man a hero. I also do not belittle the agony he went through and I doubt he has the temperment to be president. I am voting for Obama, but if I were weak minded reading a diatribe like yours would lead me to reconsider.

Bill,
1 check
2 check
3 wrong, motivation good but method flawed
4 I'd love it
5 wrong, the attorneys would love you though
6 see bill of rights
7 covered that, I would have been making it at 16. How do we encourage people to better themselves if they are going to be stupid and uneducated?
8 wrong again, it even failed in France
9 remove worldwide interdependence from our economy and eat grass. Starvation is an climate disaster.
10 Do you want any industry left in America?
11 This one I love. In number 9 you talk about climate disasters but you would penalize companies for controlling pollution even if it costs a job?
12 Do illegal immigrant workers get the same other privileges you dream about for all the other workers who will be unemployed. They will be back overseas where they can live better.

Ganshorn, I recognize that those kind of politics will not be sucessful in attracting lots of paytriots and people whose politics are limited by their connections to for-profit businesses. On the contrary it's meant to isolate and expose people like that as hostile to the interests of working people, minorities, women, immigrants and our own communities. Clearly, it works well enough on that level.

The DP, the RP, the cults and the Chamber of Commerce can all be counhted on to fight those kind of politics tooth and nail even if they're reasonable and much needed reforms. They all put greed before the urgent interests of the majority.

Parasite: noun: Walton, Gates, Buffett, Adelson, Helmsley, Kerkorian.

Under Reagan, Bush1, Clinton and Bush2 the wealth of the richest 0.1 percent of Americans tripled while the unbelievable wealth of the top 0.01 percent quadrupled. Their wealth was not created, as they claim, it was extracted, stolen and embezzled.

It came in the form of tax cuts, NAFTA, the importation of non-unionized labor, the export and elimination of union jobs, takebacks from union contracts, and swindles like the Savings and Loan bailout, Enron, and the ‘subprime’ mortgage scandal. Democrats as well as Republicans have been up to their necks in this theft and the result is that in 2005, the latest year for which data is available, the richest 400 million Americans extracted an average of $214 million in 2005 each. They didn't make it, create it or 'grow' it, they stole it.

In spite of their ‘charitable’ publicity stunts the extraction of wealth from working people explains why poverty and homelessness is inexorably increasing, why scores of millions have no medical care, and why levees and bridges are not maintained.

Most businesses, large and small, have only one goal, to make the rich much richer by giving away heaps of money to shareholders and corporate executives’ awash in stock options and bonuses and bribing politicians to get their way. The DP and the RP have a bipartisan policy of giving them what ever they want.

The AFL-CIO maintains a very inforamative website where you can compare your income to executive income company by company.

And your solution being "tax the rich" to death for everything. Capital can move. How can you tax what is not there? The .01% you keep worrying about have every ability to offshore.

Oh, and Gore Vidal is an Obama supporter.

Try googleing "Vidal endorses Obama" and take you pick from 37,000 possible choices. Still waiting for five through twelve specifics of how your plan for our socialist salvation would not ruin the country and the economy, drive away industry, cause rampant unemployment, stagflation, and make America vulnerable to all enemies foreign and domestic.

As a bonus, causing enormous hardship to the worst off one billion people in this world.

Or you can go to lunch with your bf the republican doctor. Take your time. It is nearly midnight and I won't check back for eight hours. What is the right wine to have with crow?

I would never insult Palin by comparing her to Dan Quayle. I have to admit that McCain's choice is an irresponsible gimmick. It's insulting to all the highly qualified women who have put it the time and put up with all the crap just to be passed over. It's a desperate move an hopefully obvious condescension to all American women.I'm trying real hard not to be dismissive but consider just the facts. Here are your choices a woman that openly has stated that she wants to repeal Roe vs. Wade. has a B.A. in Journalism from the University of Idaho. Keep in mind that the next President will have the opportunity to seat as many as three Supreme Court Justices in the next term. McCains record in the U.S. Naval Academy was dismal. Bad grades and bad conduct,only considered to become a pilot because his father was a top Admiral. Obama has a Juris Doctor,Magna cum laude from Harvard Law and President of the Harvard law Review. And Biden although a big mouth has extensive experience in both Domestic and Foreign affairs but to be fair I haven't check out his education. Help me out here the choice is easy. Please, I invite you to change my mind.

good lord, I don't even know where to start...

for one, I'm leaving Robert and Bill to fight that one out themselves.

second, I agree, the choice is easy. but I do think Palin is not something to be sneezed at or ignored.

and now with Palin's daughter's pregnancy revealed, and the conservatives rushing to her defense- she chose life after all instead of an abortion- she becomes a slightly different threat- one with normal problems like the rest of Americans.

this isn't easy.

oh, and robert, as a wine lover, I'd have to say something with enough body to hold up to the necessary fruit sauce you'd have to put on something as gamey as crow. I recently had an amazing pinot called "Blind Trail" (which also begs to be fitted to the circumstance) from New Zealand. heavier than most pinots, but still light enough to go with ... um... a bird.

Ganshorn, I just did a couple of fairly long posts which you simply ignored. No matter, I get lots of e-mails so I know plenty of others read them. Tell us why you think the leading light behind the 2005 bankruptcy law (which most Republicans, right wing Democrats and Chamber of Commerce types support, and answer all my other questions and maybe, just maybe, I’ll think it worth continuing you education.

Lets stick to politics, Ganshorn. My bf is a healer, and would never vote for a Republican war criminal like McCain. You know the type, I'm sure, McCain or Lt. Wm. Calley and the many others US officers guilty of murder. Thankfully their massacres didn’t stop the Vietnamese from sending them scurrying, tails between their legs, back to San Diego.

As for Gore Vidal saying that Obama's "our best demagogue since Huey Long or Martin Luther King" and that’s he's at least better than JFK, who Vidal despises, that's still very faint praise indeed. Vidal says your Camelot knight on a white steed was "one of our worst presidents" and that RFK was "a phony, a little Torquemada" because of his close association with Joe McCarthy" that's all I found in my search. Did you find something different?

nah, I won't have to hold my nose. I'm going to be voting for the first African-American man to ever be on the ballot in this country for President.

I'm excited about that.

I'm thinking... a vintage port. because port takes at least 20 years to mature in the bottle, the process to have this historic event happen took many years, and a lot of blood sweat and tears, to come about.

I'll look for a 1961, the same year Obama was born...

I don't disagree we need more diversity in our government.