Political Review - Part 1 of 4
Wow.
There's so much going on in this election. My original plan was to pull some basic facts on each candidate and compare the lists. But as I started pulling up information, I found a great deal to review. So, my intention is to review information on each and then summarize my impression.
And while I know that no brief exploration of the candidates will answer all questions, it will allow me to know more about my own thoughts. I'm also open to others commenting in any information they have that they think I may not have found and would find interesting.
I only ask that the information be substantive and not just a random rumor from a blogger.
I'll start with the Sarah Palin. After spending quite a bit of time reading up on her, I can't help it but I just don’t like her.
She’s smug and sarcastic and came out of the gate with attacks. While the Democrats are not angels, I’ve seen an obvious attempt from Obama to try and take the high road. But Palin, Palin wasn’t under fire. Both Obama and Biden stated only that they didn't really know much about her. They did not attack her record or her inexperience and certainly not her family. Sure, when she was announced as VP, the media pundits and bloggers, like the baying bloodhounds they are, started running as they caught the scent of something new and uninvestigated. If she weren’t so new, there would not have been such a frenzy. If they hadn’t found a teen pregnancy and a state legislation investigation in the first few hours, there would not have been a frenzy. But either way, Obama was not attacking her and yet she repeatedly referred to the 'attacks' against her. She refers to herself as a pitbull. So why does the Republican party keep trying to defend her and talk about attacks her as being 'sexist?'
I simply can't accept any claims from her that she is feeling pressured by the media or that she's surprised by their reaction. She, more so than the other 3, should know exactly what she's getting into. With her degreee in journalism and her years as a tv reporter, you can not convince me that she is naive and surprised that the media would want to know everything about an fairly obscure governor who just got nominated to the Vice Presidency.
I don’t care about what her daughter has or has not done, but I can’t help but feel that Palin is using two of her children as political fodder. Pushing her daughter to marry the young father 5 months into a pregnancy, and yet, just after the announcement, seems too coincidental. Using the daughter as a Pro-Life poster child is wrong. Parading her special needs infant around the campaign trail for photo-ops is sleazy. While you could argue that Palin just wants her family around for support, consider, that loud, late night rallies are not exactly the best place for a 5 month-old. There’s no really good reason that her infant son needed to be on-site.
She claims that Obama and Biden have attacked her family but Obama has specifically stated that family is off-limits and that the media should back off of those kinds of stories. So I have a problem when Palin and Thompson and other Republicans complain bitterly that her family is being attacked while at the same time she continually references her hockey mom status, her youngest son’s needs, her son and nephew service to the military, and her sister and husband opening a small business all in regards to making political points. You can't condemn others for talking about your family and then use them for your positions.
Besides my initial reactions to watching and listening to her, I’m also very uncomfortable with her consistent tendency to fight for a smaller group within the group that she should be looking for. She flat-out stated that while Governor of Alaska she intended to put her town of Wasilla first.
If she were in the White House, she has every intention of making sure that gets what she wants for her state regardless of what might be best for the country at large.
Although Republicans try to deny it, Alaskans are firm that she was a part of the Alaskan Independence Party - a party pushing for Alaska to secede from the Union (Alaska First-Alaska Always) Just this year, she sent a supportive video message to the party for an annual convention where Lynette Clark, the AIP Chairman, who announced her video said that Palin “was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town -- that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along -- she eventually joined the Republican Party."
While running for Governor, Palin supported the infamous $320 million bridge to an airport on the Island of Gravina (population 50). The bridge was being paid for by 3 different earmarks in the highway projects bill. She loves to state that she said “No” to the ‘Bridge to NoWhere’ but in actuality, Congress said no to the bridge but she kept the $200 million dollars they'd sent for it, and spent the money on other projects in Alaska. Were these projects necessary? Possibly. But did the federal government need to pay for it?
McCain described Palin as "someone who’s stopped government from wasting taxpayers’ money on things they don’t want or need. I can’t help but disagree. In 2007, after changing her mind about the bridge, she claimed that she could not support the bridge when that money could be used to shore up bridges like the one that collapsed in Minnesota. So why didn't she return the money for use on bridges in danger?
Republicans state that, as Governor, she is Commander in Chief for the Alaskan National Guard. To start with, the Governor does not decide the actions of the National Guard in time of emergency. But putting that aside, wouldn’t you want someone who would be that close to the Presidency, to at least have paid attention and to have an opinion on the War in Iraq, the surge or whether we should have a timeline? Particularly when 17 Alaskan soldiers have fallen in pursuit of Operation Iraqi Freedom and with her own family members in the military? But until the nomination, she repeatedly said that she did not have an opinion.
I still have more research to do on McCain, but his decision to bring on Palin is a significant concern for me. I'm not sure if he made the decision purely as a political manuver to try to gain more of his core conservative constituents or if he honestly thinks she would be a good Vice President. While I will not hold his age against his ability to do the job, I do have to consider that a man in his seventies is more likely to have medical concerns than a man in his 40's. This means that I have to carefully consider his choice for Vice President as there is an significant chance that she could have to step into the role. I simply cannot support Palin in the role of President. She does not have the knowledge, experience or the ethics I would want to see in a leader.
Frankly, I've never agreed with the idea that a President needs to be a 'common man.' There are far too many Americans who are badly educated and uninformed. I want a true leader. I want to support someone who is intelligent, able to tolerate stress and adversity, open-minded, and , in my heart of hearts, I want a President to put his people's welfare above his own.
And so far, I have not seen these qualities in Sarah Palin.
There's so much going on in this election. My original plan was to pull some basic facts on each candidate and compare the lists. But as I started pulling up information, I found a great deal to review. So, my intention is to review information on each and then summarize my impression.
And while I know that no brief exploration of the candidates will answer all questions, it will allow me to know more about my own thoughts. I'm also open to others commenting in any information they have that they think I may not have found and would find interesting.
I only ask that the information be substantive and not just a random rumor from a blogger.
I'll start with the Sarah Palin. After spending quite a bit of time reading up on her, I can't help it but I just don’t like her.
She’s smug and sarcastic and came out of the gate with attacks. While the Democrats are not angels, I’ve seen an obvious attempt from Obama to try and take the high road. But Palin, Palin wasn’t under fire. Both Obama and Biden stated only that they didn't really know much about her. They did not attack her record or her inexperience and certainly not her family. Sure, when she was announced as VP, the media pundits and bloggers, like the baying bloodhounds they are, started running as they caught the scent of something new and uninvestigated. If she weren’t so new, there would not have been such a frenzy. If they hadn’t found a teen pregnancy and a state legislation investigation in the first few hours, there would not have been a frenzy. But either way, Obama was not attacking her and yet she repeatedly referred to the 'attacks' against her. She refers to herself as a pitbull. So why does the Republican party keep trying to defend her and talk about attacks her as being 'sexist?'
I simply can't accept any claims from her that she is feeling pressured by the media or that she's surprised by their reaction. She, more so than the other 3, should know exactly what she's getting into. With her degreee in journalism and her years as a tv reporter, you can not convince me that she is naive and surprised that the media would want to know everything about an fairly obscure governor who just got nominated to the Vice Presidency.
I don’t care about what her daughter has or has not done, but I can’t help but feel that Palin is using two of her children as political fodder. Pushing her daughter to marry the young father 5 months into a pregnancy, and yet, just after the announcement, seems too coincidental. Using the daughter as a Pro-Life poster child is wrong. Parading her special needs infant around the campaign trail for photo-ops is sleazy. While you could argue that Palin just wants her family around for support, consider, that loud, late night rallies are not exactly the best place for a 5 month-old. There’s no really good reason that her infant son needed to be on-site.
She claims that Obama and Biden have attacked her family but Obama has specifically stated that family is off-limits and that the media should back off of those kinds of stories. So I have a problem when Palin and Thompson and other Republicans complain bitterly that her family is being attacked while at the same time she continually references her hockey mom status, her youngest son’s needs, her son and nephew service to the military, and her sister and husband opening a small business all in regards to making political points. You can't condemn others for talking about your family and then use them for your positions.
Besides my initial reactions to watching and listening to her, I’m also very uncomfortable with her consistent tendency to fight for a smaller group within the group that she should be looking for. She flat-out stated that while Governor of Alaska she intended to put her town of Wasilla first.
If she were in the White House, she has every intention of making sure that gets what she wants for her state regardless of what might be best for the country at large.
Although Republicans try to deny it, Alaskans are firm that she was a part of the Alaskan Independence Party - a party pushing for Alaska to secede from the Union (Alaska First-Alaska Always) Just this year, she sent a supportive video message to the party for an annual convention where Lynette Clark, the AIP Chairman, who announced her video said that Palin “was an AIP member before she got the job as a mayor of a small town -- that was a non-partisan job. But you get along to go along -- she eventually joined the Republican Party."
While running for Governor, Palin supported the infamous $320 million bridge to an airport on the Island of Gravina (population 50). The bridge was being paid for by 3 different earmarks in the highway projects bill. She loves to state that she said “No” to the ‘Bridge to NoWhere’ but in actuality, Congress said no to the bridge but she kept the $200 million dollars they'd sent for it, and spent the money on other projects in Alaska. Were these projects necessary? Possibly. But did the federal government need to pay for it?
McCain described Palin as "someone who’s stopped government from wasting taxpayers’ money on things they don’t want or need. I can’t help but disagree. In 2007, after changing her mind about the bridge, she claimed that she could not support the bridge when that money could be used to shore up bridges like the one that collapsed in Minnesota. So why didn't she return the money for use on bridges in danger?
Republicans state that, as Governor, she is Commander in Chief for the Alaskan National Guard. To start with, the Governor does not decide the actions of the National Guard in time of emergency. But putting that aside, wouldn’t you want someone who would be that close to the Presidency, to at least have paid attention and to have an opinion on the War in Iraq, the surge or whether we should have a timeline? Particularly when 17 Alaskan soldiers have fallen in pursuit of Operation Iraqi Freedom and with her own family members in the military? But until the nomination, she repeatedly said that she did not have an opinion.
I still have more research to do on McCain, but his decision to bring on Palin is a significant concern for me. I'm not sure if he made the decision purely as a political manuver to try to gain more of his core conservative constituents or if he honestly thinks she would be a good Vice President. While I will not hold his age against his ability to do the job, I do have to consider that a man in his seventies is more likely to have medical concerns than a man in his 40's. This means that I have to carefully consider his choice for Vice President as there is an significant chance that she could have to step into the role. I simply cannot support Palin in the role of President. She does not have the knowledge, experience or the ethics I would want to see in a leader.
Frankly, I've never agreed with the idea that a President needs to be a 'common man.' There are far too many Americans who are badly educated and uninformed. I want a true leader. I want to support someone who is intelligent, able to tolerate stress and adversity, open-minded, and , in my heart of hearts, I want a President to put his people's welfare above his own.
And so far, I have not seen these qualities in Sarah Palin.