Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Sarah Palin for VP!

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Yeah... I guess only liberal women are supposed to be leaders.

:rolleyes:

I'd say this is pretty telling (it may not sounds like much, but as a lifetime Alaskan, I know it's huge). They aren't even all democrats.

The "infanticide" word is obviously inflammatory, yes, and I ain't touching the definition argument. I do find it interesting that Obama voted against the bill even when all his colleagues were voting for it. Even after the language he insisted on was added, he voted "no." Seems kind of extremist to me.

Cape Fetish, I'm not surprised by the rally. When you look at the numbers, the McCain/Palin ticket is seeing most of their gains among men, not women. I know some ladies are offended by McCain's pick, on the theory that he thinks they're dumb enough to vote with their gender, regardless of policy positions. But then there are the ladies who have become convinced that the Democrat leadership is irredeemably sexist; though most of those were planning to vote against Obama no matter what McCain did, they apparently feel vidicated that he picked a woman. There's some complex stuff going on there.

PJ

Palin's popularity rating in Alaska is only a miniscule 83%. Those people are clearly part of the vast 17%.

Sidestepping the serious debate here for a moment to promote JibJab and their hilarious satirical videos. Some may remember This Land from the 2004 campaign [img]http://aka.content.jibjab.com/thumb/ea97dacfe031c14030e512b552a589a65bc0569d[/img]. Here's their 2008 video, Time for Some Campaigning .

And, given the discussion about the nature of news programmes these days, I recommend What We Call the News (also hilarious, but I'll warn for what some might consider poor taste).


Wendy

My caveat, as usual, if you're pro-life, certainly. It's always extremist then by definition.

But if one is "pro-choice" (here are the terms of my argument), one of the important things to consider when evaluating Obama's "extremism" is the reality that a vote in these matters means to protect "choice." That's what pro-choice means in terms of legality and work in legislature as I understand it.

So I dug a little further and the history says that there were actually valid concerns on the issue of choice. It's super long, but well documented with quotes from the bills and background on the writers and participants.

The summary gives some necessary background for informed judgement:

I get from this that there are more attacks on "choice" at the state level. Also, in speaking of language added at the federal level:

Apparently SB 1082's companion bill was SB 1083 which did have extra alarming language not in the Federal BAIPA (mind you the federal vote is that of people like Sen. Boxer and Sen. Clinton used as the yardstick to brand Obama an abortion extremist).

Anyway, yes, SB 1082 was ammended, but it's companion SB 1083 was not, even though Obama offered Sen. Winkel (writer of SB 1082) the opportunity to do so as it was his right. But he didn't. In fact, Sen. Winkel tried to pass it (without any change) in 2004 as is and failed again along with five other "born alive" bills. (Obama was campaigning for US Senate and didn't take part in these decisions)

That's a whole lot of extremists.

Note the Illinois Planned Parenthood made the distinction between SB 1082 and SB 1083 in it's documents (which are incidentally linked to on factcheck--I can forgive them for not blaring this, the matter is just complicated ).

The article concludes:

Again, if you know this and read his record and still think he's extremist, then *shrug* that's what you believe. Logically, that might make Illinois' Planned Parenthood extremists and the rest of the General Assembly that voted against these bills. Nevermind that Illinois' Planned Parenthood actually approved of "compromise bill" with HB 984, I believe, which passed in 2005 (after fully clearing it, which Stanek reportedly did not want to do because she felt it "redundant").

From a pro-choice standpoint, after viewing a lot of the context, I don't find the evidence of "extremism" all that persuasive.

But "oversimplification?" Yes. Although I guess I'm a bit more sympathetic.



alcyone

Very interesting. Thanks for the details. I hadn't really looked into it personally.

PJ

So, after researching a lot more sources for the failures of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it's becoming clear that the government had a direct role in the shaping of the sub-prime mortgage market, the creation of the real estate bubble and the crisis in the financial markets today.

First, a Carter-era law known as the Community Redevelopment Act was created to allow low income families to buy their own homes. During the Clinton Administration, Clinton redefined the act and gave it some teeth by imposing financial penalties if banks did not loan money to low income home buyers. Along with the practically free money in terms of real interest rates along with the threat of penalties, banks relaxed many of their lending requirements and loaned money to virtually everyone who wanted it. Robert B. Reich, Clinton's Labor Secretary, verified on television that this information was correct.

Then there's Fannie Mae. Two recent CEO's of Fannie Mae were prominent Democrats, Franklin Raines (Clinton's Director of the Office of Management and the Budget) and Jim Johnson. Both are now primary economic advisors to Barack Obama. Both are under investigation for Enron-style accounting where the profits of Fannie Mae were drastically inflated in order to generate additional bonuses for their CEO's only to revise those profits after the bonuses were awarded. Franklin Raines alone collected $100 million in bonuses. Another prominent Democrat who also advises the Obama campaign, Jamie Gorelick, famous for writing the memo that created the "wall of separation" between the nation's law enforcement and intelligence services, pocketed millions as well.

In addition, Fannie Mae, along with Freddie Mac, offered incredible financing deals on sub-prime mortgages for home buyers who would not qualify at any bank due to credit risk. Since those two quasi-governmental entities have such a dominant presence in the mortgage market, banks had to match those deals in order to compete.

All of these factors helped to create the real estate bubble where people who could not afford to buy homes did buy homes. The Clinton Administration was directly responsible for the creation of the sub-prime mortgage market. With that result, a minor increase in interest rates burst the bubble as those risky home buyers defaulted on their adjustable rate mortgages and has resulted in the disasters at Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, AIG, and so many other banks.

In 2003, the Bush Administration proposed a law to add a new agency to oversee and regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac because of fears of insufficient oversight and signs of corruption. In addition, the administration was afraid insufficient reserve funds were being maintained at these quasi-governmental companies in case interest rates were to rise. Democrats like Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd stopped the administration in its tracks, claiming that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were not in trouble and any additional oversight and regulations were an attack on the poor, preventing the poor from buying homes. The Bush Administration got nowhere on new regulations.

In 2005, John McCain gave a speech on the floor of the Senate decrying insufficient oversight over the two mortgage agencies and sponsored a bill to regulate the two companies and add additional oversight, making similar arguments the administration had done two years earlier. Once again, Democrats stopped the bill, again accusing Republicans of wanting to keep poor people from buying homes.

Fast forward to 2008. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go into bankruptcy and the government has to bail them out at a cost of $200-300 billion of taxpayer money. And instead of being quasi-government agencies, they are now fully government agencies.

There is a lot of evidence that it was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with the Clinton Administration, that helped to create the real estate bubble that has now burst and is sending the economy into the tank and financial markets into turmoil.

Yet here's Obama blaming it on Republicans when the finger can be pointed straight at two men who are part of the Obama campaign who were intimately involved in the fall of Fannie Mae. Any time markets are distorted by government intervention, bubbles form and must eventually burst.

Obama wants more of the same and wants even more direct government involvement in the financial and mortgage markets.

Oh, and since 1989, guess who are the people who have gotten more political contributions from Fannie Mae than anyone else? Number one is Christopher Dodd, who along with Jim Johnson were embroiled in the Countrywide Mortgage scandal. Number two, despite having been in the US Senate for less than four years is... Barack Obama. Number three is Hillary Clinton. John McCain is so far down the list of 325 that he barely registers.

John McCain has called for a criminal investigation into Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac's fall and a commission to study new regulations. Guess who opposes such an investigation? Yep, Barack Obama, knowing that the ties to Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson, and Jamie Gorelick will come to the foreground.

P.S. It occurred to me I never really identified what a bubble was in terms of economics. A bubble occurs under artificial circumstances that are not tied to market forces (supply/demand). In the case of a real estate bubble, artificially low interest rates promoted by Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac plus the threat of government penalties caused lenders to loan money they otherwise would not have to people who couldn't actually afford a home.

A few people were appalled that McCain had accused Obama of wanting to teach sex ed to kindergartners. Not knowing much about the issue, I thought I'd do some research. Evidence shows that McCain was correct in his accusation that Obama wanted to teach sex education to kindergartners. The bill in question actually reads that sexually transmitted diseases and how they are passed were to be taught to any K-12 students. Uncovering the actual details of the syllabus show that for Illinois students ages 5-8 were to be taught the names of all body parts involved in sex, how the sexual act occurs, and the pleasures of masturbation. The syllabus also discusses same-sex relationships for students ages 5-8.

The exact text of the bill includes this passage:

Obama claimed that his bill only was meant to discuss inappropriate touching. Byron York of the National Review did an investigation and found that while that is in the bill, it was a very minor part and was not the primary focus of the bill. The primary purpose of the bill was to move sex education from grades 6-12 to occur from K-12. Parents were only given an opt-out provision for the teaching about the transmission and prevention of HIV.

Whether you approve of such a syllabus or not, John McCain was not incorrect in his ad.

I, myself, am making no judgments as to whether this type of curriculum is appropriate or not. That is not the purpose of this post. The purpose is to show that McCain has been unfairly maligned and accused of a false ad when in fact it is not false at all.

Here is a copy of the syllabus that is used for Illinois schools:

http://www.siecus.org/_data/global/images/guidelines.pdf

Students who are aged 5-8 are taught the Level 1 curriculum. When looking at the syllabus, just search for "Level 1" repeatedly to find what is taught to the students.

Here is the actual NRO article .

It's very much a right publication, but the background it gives on the bill (especially in the quotes) is extremely helpful, even for people on the left.

The article covers the questions of what was the bill about, which groups/people sponsored it and why. It also quotes Obama's position on it in 2004 Senate race when he was accused by Keyes.

Very informative.

alcyone

For those who want to see a Sarah Palin interview (seeing as this is the Sarah Palin thread), she's being interviewed on Hannity and Colmes on the Fox News Channel today and tomorrow at 9 pm EDT/6 pm PDT.

The real biyatch about this situation is that now banks are so tight that my hubby and I, with our individual 700+ credit ratings, solid payment history and both working, now no longer qualify for a house loan because the companies we work for are contracting companies. My hubby got offered a position in AZ with the promise that he would be eventually hired(it's one of the reasons we moved) but now the company wants to hold off hiring until "the economy gets more solid". We are doing fine financially(the economy isn't depression era, I promise), but we can't get a house and don't want to pay for an apartment unless either of us have permanent jobs. I'm not suprised to see this closed door back pay stuff happening based on the folks involved, but it's annoyingly inconvienant.

Meantime, Sarah Palin is getting her email hacked by a left swung gossip group. Great ethics going there /sarc :rolleyes:

Thanks for the Hannity update Roger, I've been hearing about it on 100.3 Ktlk; I hope to catch it on TV tonight if the in laws'll relinquish the remote.

TEEEEEEEEEJ

TEEJ -

I thought of you guys as I was reading/hearing some of this.

And H/C is on twice .

Carol

Barack Obama has released a very offensive Spanish language ad by linking completely out-of-context comments by Rush Limbaugh with McCain. Anyone who has ever heard Limbaugh knows McCain is not exactly Limbaugh's favorite person, considering a large number of his parody skits are directed at McCain. To link them together, especially when Limbaugh opposed McCain every step of the way on illegal immigration, is disingenuous at best.

Here's a link to an ABC News piece about the complete distortions, i.e. lies, Obama has made in order to win the Hispanic vote.

Political Punch

What shocks me is that ABC News called him on it. That must mean ABC really thinks it's bad.

Just to even things out a bit:
The AP looks at the distortion/lies in both Obama and McCain's Spanish language ads.

The offense, I imagine is similar to the one I felt about the Sex Ed one. Speaking of that ad, I'd be remiss if I didn't post Factcheck's disagreement with York:

Factcheck bites York back.

alcyone

It seems to me FactCheck didn't read the syllabus that formed the basis of Senate Bill 99, which is the one I posted a link to, since they make no mention of it. While the bill does not explicitly say that kindergartners will be taught the names of body parts, how sex works, how same sex relationships work, and so on, the syllabus does show what it means by the phrase, "age appropriate."

By reading all the Level 1 entries, you can see what "age appropriate" meant to the authors of the bill for kindergartners. Whether Obama read it, I don't know so I cannot read his intent, seeing as he wasn't a co-sponsor. But given the syllabus used to formulate the bill, McCain's ad is accurate. Again, I make no value judgment about whether it's appropriate to teach kindergartners those types of things, but the syllabus goes beyond simply teaching kids about inappropriate touching.

As for Obama's ad using Limbaugh, the reason I found it offensive was the way Limbaugh's words were being taken completely out of context making him look like a racist, and by trying to tie McCain to Limbaugh, Obama tried to make McCain look like a racist. This one wasn't even close to being accurate on so many levels. Ads always stretch things, but this one was way over the line, otherwise I wouldn't have bothered mentioning it.

And it seems to me that you haven't read the Factcheck article. I find it hard to believe they haven't read the bill when they actually cite SB 99 and dissect it at length, based on the exact wording.

Its conclusion is:

The extremely partisan defense of the ad is the very definition of a specious argument. It's quite obvious what the insinuation was and what kind of disturbing image it was supposed to send. The distortion becomes even more evident when you read what's actually on the bill, who sponsored it and the intention of the interested parties.

I won't defend the Obama ad. I am not so blinded by my ideology that I don't recognize when the truth is twisted beyond recognition.

alcyone

I think you misread what I wrote. I said they failed to read what was behind the bill. They may have read the bill but not the source material used to make the bill. Did you read the syllabus? I read the bill, the syllabus, and the FactCheck article. My claim is that they didn't read the syllabus behind the bill. It's the syllabus that defined the details of what "age appropriate" meant. They gave no indication that they did since it wasn't mentioned. I found a hole in their research. While it doesn't invalidate all of their research, it does leave them open to the wrong conclusion.

If I had only read the bill and FactCheck, I probably would have come up with the same conclusion they did, but they didn't go deep enough.

And if you had read my disclaimers, I gave Obama an out, recognizing he may not have read the syllabus. If he had, perhaps he would have voted no, or perhaps not. I don't know. My point was only to prove the ad wasn't false. No more, no less. If this had been ideology driven, I wouldn't have given him the out.

Here's the relevant disclaimer I posted earlier:

Starting to get personal, are you?

The bill was not Obama's one accomplishment and it was not to teach explicit sex education to young children.

Nevermind how inaccurate it is to call is Obama's one accomplishment, which is the more explicitly false claim. That last is the main insinuation that carries the ad and the reason why it's so shocking. I see nothing in your post or the York article that counters this.

I do see however a lot of partisan defense for a candidate's distortion of the truth under the interrogation of "age appropriate" and questioning the importance of "inappropriate touching" based on the syllabus used to formulate the bill.

Oh, and--

The actual bill reads at the beginning:

This why I trust factcheck more. Their agenda is to contextualize the facts in their situation, no wonder there are loopholes--those are what is needed to twist the facts one way or another.

This argument and York's switches from the facts to a defense that only has currency from a conservative perspective, but tries to sell itself as somehow neutral. It's that false pretense of neutrality that I take issue with.

Apparently there is a history that a lot of people from the left recognize with respect to sex ed and politics, btw (speaking of partisan interpretations).

I'm not enthused that National Journal said Obama was number one most liberal or whatever, and Media Matters gave some "loopholes" to question that, but ultimately they're biased and National Journal is not, which is why a partisan defense of those findings is nothing more than that: a partisan defense.

Likewise, when the only places that support a certain interpretation are conservative spaces, it's very clear we're not in the realm of facts anymore.

Without facts through a common ground (something deemed "non-partisan"), any sort of dialogue is impossible.

alcyone

PS ABC is known by some in the left as "Fox-lite."

ETA: Politifact also factchecks with the same result.

Umm, did you actually watch the ad? It never used the word, "explicit." It quoted the bill with the use of the phrase, "comprehensive sex education." When you used the word, "explicit," that set off all sorts of warning bells so I went back to watch the ad again, twice just to make sure I didn't miss anything. That word appears nowhere in the ad, nor does any other word that's similar in meaning.

As for "one accomplishment," it's all in the eye of the beholder what is classified as an accomplishment. That's an opinion, not one subject to fact checking. My opinion is that he hasn't accomplished a thing, so McCain gives him more credit than I do.

Now yes, he did get it wrong with the quote allegedly from the Chicago Tribune. Big deal. That's about the only thing you could say was inaccurate. The quote was real, just the attribution was wrong.

I have never heard ABC called Fox-lite. If anything, conservatives consider ABC the enemy. That Charles Gibson is such a conservative, right?

Here's a sample of those questions:

Gibson to Obama: "How do you spell C-A-T?"
EDIT: Better question: "What's your favorite color?" <g>

Gibson to Palin: "What's the average airspeed of an unladen swallow?"
Palin to Gibson: "African or European?"
Gibson to Palin: "Gotcha!"

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