We just went into another reality. Maybe it was the moment when Piper was licking her hand to slick back Trig's hair as he rested in her lap in the Palin family box, a nice moment, a real one, and then a few minutes later and Trig is handed up to mom to be held up on stage with the giant rippling flag behind her, his uncomprehending face under the lights. I don't know where we went, not sure I want to be there. I feel as helpless and out of place as Levi.
They have no politics these Republicans but small town resentment and mockery of a reflective black man, as pretentious, self-involved. All the outsider energy. I'm all for outsider energy, but who got us into this mess; you did not hear the name George Bush in her amazing performance or Giuliani's brilliant angry one. So they are just running against elite culture. And what ideas does she have? The idea that only people in small towns serve in the military. The idea that community organizing is some sinister form of socialism. The idea that Obama is running as "a journey of personal self-discovery." Or that it is an "accolade" to have a politician say, as Harry Reid supposedly did, I cannot stand John McCain. So much anger and resentment. Anger that Obama wrote memoirs, mockery that he is Jesus, or a celebrity, and has styrofoam Greek columns behind him to manipulate the elites.
I didn't feel good all night, I only felt good when she spoke about being a vice president who would care about parents with special needs. I loved her then. It was hopeful and warm, the rest was just scary.
The speech ended with her picture of McCain giving the thumbsup in his prison a long long time ago. There's nowhere to go from here. Did she speak well, sure, she spoke great, not a stumble, she is erasing doubts about her stageworthiness. But she has no positive idea other than McCain is a great father figure, and all the rest is scorn toward Obama as a pencil-neck poseur and conman, and the repetition of community organizer feels like code for He's black. It's just mean, and shabby, and hopeless. We're better than that. And they're going down.
She's going to be great. And what the hell is "community organizing" anyway?
What would Dwight Eisenhower or Nelson Rockefeller say about today's "Republicans"?
Palin's demagoguery on the nature of oil markets made me hit the roof.
She's a non-entity, and she may be headed to the White House.
Americans who can would be well advised to move all of their capital offshore immediately.
SoG: Go fuck yourself. Whoever you are, you don't qualify as human.
She says she cares about children with special needs, but she cut the budget for special needs children in Alaska by SIXTY-TWO PER CENT.
From Mudflats, an Alaskan progressive blog, way down in comments by Tammy, search on special needs:
link to mudflats.wordpress.com
the quote, with links:
"The following programs are included within this component:
Special Education Service Agency (SESA)
The Annual budget for 2007, which preceded Gov. Palin was $8,265,300.
link to gov.state.ak.us
The Annual budget for 2008, enacted by Gov. Palin is $3,156,000.
link to gov.state.ak.us
The Annual budget for 2009, enacted by Gov. Palin is $3,156,000.
link to gov.state.ak.us
This is a cut in special needs services to children in Alaska of 5,109,300 , or 62%.
So, as the Alaska State Budget description states, “Without the supplementary services the child’s needs would not be met by the local school district in most cases.”
Watch these Republicans. Watch what they do, don't listen to what they say. Phil, she warmed your heart with her sop to special needs parents, but she cut the budget from $8 million plus to $3 million. For two years running! But her kid is covered by her insurance so she has no problems.
Via Jack and Jill Politics (self-described black bourgeoisie) via Daily Kos.
Sorry Phil but the Black guy with the Moslem name who goes to the hate whitey church was always a non-starter. Both political parties are anti-White Christian but the Republicans have the good sense to try to hide that fact.
This election was the Democrats to lose and they lost it. The White majority just needed the slightist push to vote against the Black guy and in favor of four more years of neo-con rule. McCain's selection of Palin is that slight push. Good going liberals in 2012 why don't you nominate a trans-sexual midget with a bone in his nose that will alienate Middle America even more than Obama did.
Phil: I don't know where you get the notion that community organizers are (necessarily) black. I met a lot of them during the eight years I lived in Berkeley and frankly they were mostly white long haired lefties.
Besides what on earth is wrong with ridiculing community organizers? Community organizing isn't so much a real job aa kind of internship program for people entering progressive politics.
And finally, before you get too afraid of people who ridicule community organizing, shouldn't you also be afraid of people who go around ridiculing gun owners, or working class whites who "cling" to their religion, or people, like Sarah Palin, who hunt down the ingredients for making moose stew.
As for Plain's mockery of Obama for having written two memoirs, well it seems entirely appropriate. Aren't you supposed to have done something first before you write two books about your life? Shouldn't that come at the end of a life of accomplishment and not the beginning?
And of course people from small towns are resentful. The eastern elites who run this country (and their friends in the media) ridicule them constantly. The LA Times had two stories and four columns/op-ed pieces today on why Palin wasn't qualified to be vice president. Yet as far as I can tell she has more executive experience than John Kennedy did when he ran for vice-president in 1956.
"Watch what they do, don't listen to what they say."
You're absolutely right, Leila. The RNC is something right out of Orwell.
Sarah Palin in June 2008 on a $30 billion natural gas pipeline project that she wanted built in Alaska: "I think God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built, so pray for that."
There's your "great" VP candidate, SoG.
Phil, for someone so good on the neocon problem you come across astonishingly ignorant about white working-class voters. Don't you understand how absurd it's seems to a blue-collar worker that Obama would erect Styrofoam Greek columns for his acceptance speech?
As for calling Sarah Palin's speech tonight proof only of her "stageworthiness," surely that is beneath you. One could say Obama's calm cool demeanor is only proof of his stageworthiness too. The fact is, for those of us who will never get to chat with the the candidates in person, you have to assess them by what you see on TV. Tonight Palin came across as strong, warm and decisive. Maybe some of it is an act, but if it is it's a good act. She sure looked a lot more authentic than Romney, Giuliani or Biden did.
Furthermore she did this under unimaginable pressure with the media claiming Trek wasn't her kid, her husband a drunk, and that she was a lying adultress. The media was slamming everything about her including the fact that she liked moose stew. In my book, she did one heck of a job. Hemingway said character is grace under pressure. Palin, I think, showed that, which is why the eastern elite and the media are so frigging freaked tonight.
Are you sure you aren't just mad, like so many in the media, that Obama had a chance to choose Hillary and instead named a blithering fool like Biden? And then it was senile old fossil McCain who actually did what Obama should have done and put a woman on the ticket?
Phil — you and 99% of other Jews are amazingly biased against people from small towns. Your hatred of 'provincials' is so blatant and arrogant that it makes me sick to my stomach.
I detect a hint of jealousy in your appraisal of such people…maybe you are jealous the fact that these people are strongly rooted in a single place and do not live the life of nomads and gypsies like your people? Or may it's the fact that they work hard at jobs and trades that take real life-skills and aren't all witty journalists or professors at liberal universities or diamond merchants or pharmaceutical salespeople (aka doctors)? Or maybe you envy their sense of community in those tight-knit small towns and secretly resent the Jewish lifestyle of anonymous and impersonal big-city-living? Most of all though you and your co-ethnics suffer from nature-deficit disorder, having been cooped up in apartments and townhouses and crowded city-streets your whole life, having never been free or adventurous enough to roam the natural world…no, you and your people are too good and 'cvilized' for that, so much so that you all prefer city-concrete instead of a large lush-green field, the sidewalk to the hiking trail, the glowing storefront to the moonlit lake.
So now we get down to the "serious" business of cheering for the guy or gal, picked for us by the zionist ruling class?
If we are so easily sucked into this infantile excercise, are we really worthy of the title: "free people"? I don't think so.
Can an honest person fail to see that this system ,which is owned by the rich, and fueled by the labor of the masses, is headed down the path of reaction?.Does it really matter if McCain or Obama call the shots? I know it matters to those elites fighting for the booty that comes with power. But can whoever wins the President be independent of the interests that fund and advise their campaigns?
Why is Phil and others closing their eyes to the reality that AIPAC,The Defense Lobby,The Banking Lobby, and The Oil Lobby are shaping the agenda for the candidates…???
We don't need anymore "noble" lies..
Re: Michaek Blaine – "The RNC is something right out of Orwell."
Oh please; did you see the size and scope of the Democratic Convention? it was clearly far more Orwellian than the Repub convention.
A stadium of 80,000 plus? A screen the size of a soccer field with The Leader's face plastered all over it?
The best response to the Palin tripe, is the emphasis on community service.
Kennedyesque.
Family, and community service as civic virtue.
Not more negative, but distinct.
Message.
Re; Duscany – "Palin, I think, showed that, which is why the eastern elite and the media are so frigging freaked tonight."
Hell yes the eastern elite (disproportionately Jewish) are freaked right now, as they should be; their media-industrial complex is crumbling due to the influence of the internet and other factors. Their financial system is crumbling as well, and we will see who they grovel to when times get tough and they want more food (hint: food is not grown in cities, but out in the COUNTRYSIDE).
A whole post without any Judenhaas! How'd you hold your sphincter closed that long?
More to the point, how many Allahu Akbars do you have to say and how much money do you have to donate to the al-aksa brigades to make up for this momentary omission?
a new fault line has opened here. small town america versus the godless cosmopolitan elitists. and i think it was me who started it and i feel chagrined. i didnt want to attack all cosmopolitans, only egregious extremists like blaine and phil.
i guess buchanan sent some boys over here to kick some godless cosmopolitan ass.
in fact it seems i may have got to phil. did he sneer at chi in response to my little buddhist teaching? but phil demonstrates again that he is just a wannabe cosmopolite. todays cosmopolis is global and transcultural, with manhattan and dharmsala being highly connected nodes. with relation to the world cosmopolis phil is a jealous small town rube who does not know the difference between buddhism and taoism. get a life, phil.
yes i think it is coming clear. the old cosmopolitan had enough international ties to rise above the strictures of their national outlook. todays cosmopolitan has enough intercultual ties to rise above the strictures of the outlook of their culture, race, and class.
could obama be like that? i hope.
Thanks to Leila for the info.
and Richard. I am not sure, how to counter the attraction of resentment as a pseudo-unifying emotion. Emotion sits deeper than reason often beyond awareness. Is there any research concerning its attraction vs the good and positive position. Are these people accessible to facts at all? The facts Leila presents.
But it is really interesting to watch the sentiments this topic raises.
As Phil seemed to have, it felt like a very clever choice and strategy to me.
Look at the pleased neo-neocon who lately files most article concerning Palin under:
uncategorized
It's not about Palin, Palin does not matter. Uncategorized lately mirrors the the joy about the strategy.
The lady is a therapist but she did not experience what Phil, did, she was in fact pleased.
Ooops: No idea what was my intention here:
The lady is a therapist, but she did not experience what Phil(no,no) did, she was in fact pleased.
Much to do and no proofreader at hand. ;)
adding something:
An interesting observation by Pat Lang much on my mind concerning Palin too.
There is absolutely no doubt Palin will be a perfect soldier in a populist approach. Triggering the pseudo-unifying feeling of ressentment. As surely her sex-appeal and her image as a fighter against elites will be helpful, no matter how empty this image may be at its core. …
Obama's presentation at the DNC was positive, clear, distinct, specific.
If he stays on message himself, relentlessly, there is no chance that the republicans will even get 45% of the vote.
He's a serious candidate, approaching the issues as if he intends to govern.
McCain is a gambler. He might win in a single bar-room poker game, but he will lose his shirt in the long run, and the shirts of all that have contributed funds (taxes) to his "administration".
If he wins the presidency, with a democratic Congress, my favorite thorn will be relieved (the tax law). It has a sunset provision in 2009, and some in 2010, that will return the tax law to some normalcy. The estate tax will be reinstated at prior statutory levels. The capital gains and dividends tax will be reinstated at prior statutory levels.
Even if nothing happens at all during that time, the US will get healthier in that respect. More fair, favoring work and new investment, rather than STRONGLY favoring investments from old money, over entrepreneurs, and over work.
I hope there won't be a rash of premature deaths in early 2009, for tax purposes.
There is no way, no way, that Obama's tax proposals are going to work. The difference between this and the 90's is that you had the computer revolution, the end of the cold war, and the benefits of the Reagan tax cuts. Obama, Pelosi, and Reid will raise taxes in the midst of a global slowdown and a credit crisis. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Conventions embarrass me, so I don't watch them- and the same can be said of most political events.
I'd also love to see a real movement against the bi-coastal establishment, but I don't think that AIPAC pawns of either party will do the job. And Phil's hysterical rantings about rubes, and mindless embracing of Obama, comes off as more anti-white bigotry. Don't worry, Phil, whites who vote for McCain will be voting against their best interests. You have nothing to worry about!
I'd just like for someone to give real reasons that white Americans should vote for Obama, rather than just calling the ones who don't bigots, rubes or racists-that's just too easy. This election should have been a landslide for the Democrats-just like the last one should have been a landslide for the Democrats-and they may just fumble it away out of hostility, bigotry, racism (on their part) and stupidity. If the Democrats lose, they only have themselves to blame.
'Re: Michael Blaine – "The RNC is something right out of Orwell."
Oh please; did you see the size and scope of the Democratic Convention? it was clearly far more Orwellian than the Repub convention.
A stadium of 80,000 plus? A screen the size of a soccer field with The Leader's face plastered all over it?'
Sure.
But I didn't happen personally to watch any of the DNC.
Todd: "I'd just like for someone to give real reasons that white Americans should vote for Obama."
OK, here's one:
John Sidney McCain III will give another tax break to the richest 1%; Obama will not.
Not much, but sufficient to decide how to cast one's vote.
I just think that Obama's talk of another round of Great Society, along with Jeremiah Wright and his San Francisco speech, will trump a tax cut for the wealthy for most whites.
It has a sunset provision in 2009, and some in 2010, that will return the tax law to some normalcy…
I hope there won't be a rash of premature deaths in early 2009, for tax purposes.
I assume the above concerns Obamas tax ideas, and the afterthought below is tongue-in-cheek?
The US top strata of society had 8 years now to double their gains/profits. So hopefully that does not leave them all too suicidal.
It has a sunset provision in 2009, and some in 2010, that will return the tax law to some normalcy…
I hope there won't be a rash of premature deaths in early 2009, for tax purposes.
I assume the above concerns Obamas tax ideas, and the afterthought below is tongue-in-cheek?
The US top strata of society had 8 years now to double their gains/profits. So hopefully that does not leave them all too suicidal.
Anyone who is not afraid to at least think the word "Jew" or to theorize that perhaps your college psychology professor, or Dana Milbank, or Bernanke, ad nauseum do not have your best interests at heart, recognizes that the real problem with "community organizing" is Trotsykist beauties like Saul Alinsky who used it as a cover to antagonize and undermine our society.
Many people who you would characterize as racist really do not have a problem with blacks. Many people who think about it find the relationship between Jews and blacks and Jews and Obama to be condescending, manipulative, and shameful.
"Todd: "I'd just like for someone to give real reasons that white Americans should vote for Obama."
OK, here's one:
John Sidney McCain III will give another tax break to the richest 1%; Obama will not."
Well, you know, it's hard to cut the taxes of people who don't pay paxes.