WIP

At least he had some substantive points and not just endless emotional appeals. Did Sarah Palin, or any other Republican speakers for that matter, have anything to say about the economy?

And Adolph Hitler would have been a ratings phenom if he was around today also; what's your point? Of course she is attracting a lot of attention; but the only enthusiasm for her is coming from the hardcore religious conservative base. A lot of other people have considered the reverse discrimination problem for everyone who has to take on a woman candidate. If I might digress a bit, Rick Lazio won that debate with Hillary Clinton for the N.Y. Senate seat hands down, but was effectively castigated as being a bully because he walked over and handed Hillary Clinton a piece of paper! You can bet that debate strategists are already talking to Joe Biden about how to effectively debate Sarah Palin, without giving the Republicans a chance to play the sexism card. From what we do know about her, she has good communication skills, and combined with her insane views about the environment, abortion, sex education, creationism, war policy, everyone who is not in the tank with the religious right are rightly concluding that this woman is toxic, and should be an even greater focus of attention than John McCain, the guy who's supposed to head the ticket.

POLITICO is about the only U.S. newsblog that has tried to be bipartisan and talk to people on both sides of the political divide. But the Republicans have raised the drawbridge and declare war on all independent media; a very stupid decision considering the falling numbers for their media like Foxnews and Rush Limbaugh, who are seeing declining ratings in an election year. They will serve as an even smaller platform for Republican propaganda after the election is over.

Now that even bald-headed, pinstriped womanizers like Rudy Giuliani are playing the sexism card, CBS is going to have to issue an apology for fact-checking her speech. Maybe if they follow the Politico's example, it would be helpful: — On behalf of the media, I would like to say we are sorry. On behalf of the elite media, I would like to say we are very sorry. We have asked questions this week that we should never have asked. We have asked pathetic questions like: Who is Sarah Palin? What is her record? Where does she stand on the issues? And is she is qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency? We have asked mean questions like: How well did John McCain know her before he selected her? How well did his campaign vet her? And was she his first choice? Bad questions. Bad media. Bad............................. But where did we go wrong with Sarah Palin? Let me count the ways: First, we should have stuck to the warm, human interest stuff like how she likes mooseburgers and hit an important free throw at her high school basketball tournament even though she had a stress fracture. Second, we should have stuck to the press release stuff like how she opposed the Bridge to Nowhere (after she supported it). Third, we should never have strayed into the other stuff. Like when The Washington Post recently wrote: “Palin is under investigation by a bipartisan state legislative body. … Palin had promised to cooperate with the legislative inquiry, but this week she hired a lawyer to fight to move the case to the jurisdiction of the state personnel board, which Palin appoints.” Why go there? What trees does that plant? Fourth, we should stop making with all the questions already. She gave a really good speech. And why go beyond that? As we all know, speeches cannot be written by others and rehearsed for days. They are true windows to the soul. Unless they are delivered by Barack Obama, that is. In which case, as Palin said Wednesday, speeches are just a “cloud of rhetoric.” Fifth, we should stop reporting on the families of the candidates. Unless the candidates want us to. Sarah Palin wanted the media to report on her teenage son, Track, who enlisted in the Army on Sept. 11, 2007, and soon will deploy to Iraq. Sarah Palin did not want the media to report on her teenage daughter, Bristol, who is pregnant and unmarried......................

I think Barack Obama proved his organization ability when he put together a team and a strategy to outmaneuver the Clinton stranglehold on the Democratic Party. Karl Rove and other Republican hatchetmen were so sure of a Hillary coronation, that they started a smear campaign against her before the first primary had taken place. When the Hillary Campaign started complaining about caucuses, it was a tip off that they were getting beat on the ground by the grassroots organization that Obama had put together in a relatively short time, considering that the Clintons had been planning years for this election. To me, that says more about executive ability than someone who has been running a state for the last 18 months that has a population not much larger than the city of Hamilton!

Moderates in the Conservative Party are going to end up like moderates in the Republican Party once they are no longer needed! How much impact do groups like Republicans For Choice have in the Republican Party today? Judging from the increasingly reactionary party platforms that come out of each Republican convention, I'm guessing they rank down there somewhere with the Log Cabin Republicans.

And she proved she can read it off the teleprompter! So I guess she's one up on Bush! And what exactly was so great about the speech anyway? Reading over the transcript, it looks like typical Republican BS from start to finish: I think every other convention speech has started off with a reference to McCain's POW days in Vietnam. Here's my kids -- ain't I a wonderful mom, and pay no attention to that Alaska Independence Party thing, I'm so patriotic, I'm sending my son off to war to fight in this generations' quagmire. But, since she is supposed to be a feminist Republican, does that mean she'll be sending her daughters off to war also when they come of age? What else! And she's a maverick reformer, except for taking all of those earmarks while mayor and supporting the "bridge to nowhere" before she was against it. I hope the Dems have enough sense to go after her for all of the lies and distortions in this little speech, regardless of who wrote it! Nothing here about alternative energy and conservation -- just oxymorons like 'clean coal' and drilling for the piddling little amount of oil on the northshore, and to hell with the polar bears! "Victory in Iraq is finally in sight." Well you better hope it's not another mirage this time; the Iraq War has cost 551 billion so far, and the Pentagon estimates the final tally will be 1.2 trillion dollars. And those numbers don't include collateral costs such as the increasing medical costs of wounded and disabled veterans that will have to be payed for over the coming decades. And a McCain/Palin ticket will cut taxes. Since Dubya has already doubled the U.S. national debt during his term in office, it's not surprising that Palin's speech doesn't mention how they will balance the budget while cutting taxes and paying for wars and soaring health care costs. Is there anything here besides one clever line about Obama's stage props, that would be different than any other generic Republican speech? ARe the Republicans really serious about winning over independent voters, especially Hillary supporters? I don't see anything in this speech that would appeal to anyone outside of the Republican base!

And what has Harper done for the economy besides blowing a hole in the Federal Deficit and spending money like a drunken sailor to buy his way into a majority government? Maybe things are humming along out in Alberta, where most of the true blue conservatives live, but here in Ontario, the economy is falling apart as manufacturing jobs are lost because of a higher dollar. What is Harper's economic plan besides turning Alberta into one giant oil sands project?

I still have my suspicions about how much "choice" the daughter has about getting married at 17! In the old days, she would have been forced to marry the father, and her boyfriend would have been told he had to do the "honourable thing" or face reprisal from the girl's dad. Let's just hope they are really ready for each other and don't have thoughts about whether they made the right choice five years down the line. To me, that's the most shocking view this woman has! A 14 year old girl could get attacked and raped, and Sarah Palin is going to force her to carry it to term and give birth to her rapist's baby! She's right out of the Old Testament, except that Mosaic Law also demanded the rapist pay a bride price to the father and marry the girl that he had raped: Deuteronomy: 22:28 If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; 22:29 Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days. King James Version Maybe that will be the next plank in the family values campaign!

There are so many trees in this forest, I totally forgot about cutting funding for teen mother programs! Yet another reason why her twisted, two sided morality should be given a forensic examination!

Judging from his MySpace page, the father-to-be doesn't seem ready to settle down. Looks like a Shotgun Wedding is in his future: Johnston, 17, who is entering his senior year at Wasilla HS, plays on the school hockey team and was once teammates on a youth squad with Palin's older brother, Track, 19, who is now in the Army. On his MySpace page, Johnston boasts, "I'm a f - - -in' redneck" who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes. "But I live to play hockey. I like to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some s- - - and just f - - -in' chillin' I guess." "Ya f - - - with me I'll kick [your] ass," he added. He also claims to be "in a relationship," but states, "I don't want kids." Campaign officials said McCain knew of the pregnancy when he picked Palin last week as his running mate. New York Post Sept.3 I have to wonder, considering Governor Palin's extreme views, whether her daughter is deciding to marry the father of her baby of her own free will! This guy looks like just another empty headed jock who was just out to get layed!

Who knows, but you guys are spinning in overdrive to try to shift the story to a discussion about working mothers. The daughter's pregnancy calls into question all of the BS about abstinence education programs that Sarah Palin and the conservative base of the Republican Party are pushing on the rest of the country even though states that have enacted 'abstinence only' show an increase in both teen pregnancy and STD rates. Now that Sarah Palin has joined the legions of parents who have had teenage daughters become pregnant, she should be grilled about her policies that encourage teen pregnancy through ignorance, and the media should ignore her attempts to play the "private family matter" card and keep her feet to the fire on this issue, because she is an advocate for these programs, and would no doubt try to push them further if she became Vice President.

Yep! Now we can expect Republican mouthpieces like Oreilly, Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, to start marching for women's rights, and stop haranguing pregnant teenage girls. Now, when the next Jamie Lynn Spears story comes along, they will be congratulating her for keeping the baby instead of condemning her for having sex and getting pregnant at 16.........yes............no...........maybe?

Well, if Stephen Harper can win evangelical single issue voters while flying under the radar, he'll keep right on doing it. If he gets his majority government, he'll be throwing some red meat their way as a reward; I wonder what he's got to keep them happy and working enthusiastically on the campaign. I think this goes beyond Harper though, and there is a wider strategy that's also in the provincial conservative parties to go after religiously motivated voters because last year in the Ontario Election, P.C. leader John Tory all of a sudden found religion too! Up until he promised funding for "faith-based schools", I thought the only thing he was interested in was money and prestige; but Tory all of sudden started sounding like George Bush's handlers drove up to Queens Park to teach him how to sound god-fearing. The plan backfired for a couple of reasons: one, he was going to take 500 million out of the public education budget to doll out to the religious schools, and he was having trouble learning his lines, so he kept making gaffes like allowing religious schools taking public financing to teach creationism: Mr. Tory's controversial education plan escalated last week when he told reporters that religious schools should be allowed to teach creationism if they receive public funding. His office issued a clarification later that day saying creationism should be explored only in religion class and not elsewhere in the curriculum.

Now I'm really beginning to wonder exactly when the McCain campaign will stick a fork in Sarah Palin and replace her with Romney or Pawlenty. Every day there's a new scandal to try to sweep under the carpet: Palin Took Contributions From Fundraising Scheme At Center Of Ted Stevens Scandal WASHINGTON — GOP vice presidential pick Sarah Palin accepted at least $4,500 in campaign contributions in the same fundraising scheme at the center of a public corruption scandal that led to the indictment of Sen. Ted Stevens. The contributions, made during Palin's failed 2002 bid to become Alaska's lieutenant governor, were not illegal for her to accept. But they show how Palin, a self-proclaimed reformer who has bucked Stevens and his allies, is nonetheless a product of a political system in Alaska now under the cloud of an ongoing FBI investigation. _In her earlier career as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, Palin hired a lobbyist to help the tiny town secure at least 14 earmarks, worth $27 million between 2000-2003. McCain has touted Palin as a force in his long battle against earmarks. Palin opposed the U.S. government's listing of a variety of animals as endangered, including the polar bear and the beluga whale, both of which inhabit areas also rich in oil and natural gas. Palin "bridge to nowhere" line angers many Alaskans During her first speech after being named as McCain's surprise pick as a running mate, Palin said she had told Congress "'thanks but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere." In the city Ketchikan, the planned site of the so-called "Bridge to Nowhere," political leaders of both parties said the claim was false and a betrayal of their community, because she had supported the bridge and the earmark for it secured by Alaska's Congressional delegation during her run for governor. McCain, Palin Both Oppose Teen Pregnancy Programs (Newser) – Pregnancies in 17-year-olds like Bristol Palin are something John McCain and his running mate, her mother, agree on: neither believes the government should support sex education and pregnancy-prevention programs, other than encouraging abstinence, in schools. "The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support," Sarah Palin wrote in a 2006 questionnaire for gubernatorial candidates. And the hits just keep on coming!

I hope he gets his knuckles wrapped for calling an election; because if he does get a majority, then we will really see what he has planned for energy policy, Afghanistan and social policies that his theocon base in Alberta will demand be put in place to start the christianization of government institutions that the Americans are now enjoying.

So I guess now we can expect all of the conservatives to hit the streets campaigning for women's rights! BTW, what point are you attempting to make with the quote you place at the bottom?

If she was the Democratic candidate, you can bet that her going back to work three days after having a baby, and leaving five children at home to go on the campaign trail would be a huge issue. Whether male or female, politicians are consumed by personal ambition, and put the chance to move up to higher office ahead of everything else. It may be unfair that men can more easily escape being criticized for not being available for the children, but that's not going to change any time soon.

Got any more pictures?

I forgot about that one! McCain is just as big a tool as Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and the rest of the sleaze peddlers. I think Barack Obama wants to dampen down the attention on her daughter's pregnancy not only to prevent accusations of persecuting her children, but because this situation takes Governor Palin off her soapbox lecturing about family values. They can try to spin it as "at least she's standing by her pro life pledge", (off hand I wonder if her daughter was given a choice?), but when Jamie Lynn Spears was the subject; the focus of the conservative moral police was not on her pro life stand, it was on teen pregnancy and the need for abstinence education. Abstinence programs will be the dog that doesn't bark during this campaign!

Then go away! It's not your decision to decide what is and is not anyone's business!

No! I have not been given a credible reason why a zygote should be considered human life. And I don't believe anyone honestly considers this stage of development worth protecting either! A couple of years ago when I was on a U.S. conservative forum, while George Bush was busy vetoing embryonic stem cell research; a doctor, who was a stem cell research supporter, proposed a version of the 'trolley car dilemma' to see how much they were really valued by pro lifers, and it goes something like this: You are a security guard in a fertility clinic, and a fire has started that will soon engulf the whole building. A female technician was on her way home when she had to return to the lab with her baby in a stroller. When the fire alarms went off and smoke started pouring into the lab, she panicked, fled the building, forgetting that she had brought her baby in and left him behind. In a cold storage locker in the lab, there are 10,000 frozen embryos that have not been selected for implanting. Do you: a.Grab the baby and flee the building or b. Leave the baby to save the 10,000 "unique precious human lives" Most of the responses from doctrinaire pro lifers attacked the premise of the dilemma. None of them would apply the common utilitarian principle of all things being equal, saving the greater number of lives. Why not? The anger and indignation betrayed their lack of conviction that the embryos had just as much value as the baby. No it won't! You want to take pro life as a moral position, but not as an ethical system that would require some form of enforcement. A lot of pro life supporters fudge around the question of whether they would jail women who have abortions, like they do in El Salvador and most Muslim countries, because they know there are a lot of women who have had abortions, and would really get riled up if enforcement meant more than jailing doctors and bombing abortion clinics, and took the next step to incarcerating the women who are seeking abortions. Either way, it will be like drugs, prostitution and gambling -- it won't stop abortion, it will just put it back on the blackmarket. Well, guess what? Defining where human life begins is fuzzy! That's why there is no agreement on what stage of development should be considered worthy of the definition. But there are still competing rights and interests in this debate, that's what makes it difficult to resolve. The 'right to life' carries with it the implicit understanding that the mother is an incubator that has no say in the matter. The 'right to choose' says it's not worth consideration even in late stages when there may be limited sentient awareness and ability to feel pain. There's a whole lot of denial to go around if you take an extreme position and only consider one side's rights to be of value!

We're all going to be dead before you have enough evidence! Advocating a policy of adjusting to increasing CO2 levels and melting polar caps is a recipe for extinction. We are speeding along, raising CO2 levels and what will happen when they reach levels of the P/T extinction, when they were over 700 ppm? Or if there is a prolonged period of greenhouse effect like existed during most of the Age Of Reptiles when dinosaurs roam the Earth. There may be a fortunate few with money and resources to survive and fight off intruders in the far north -- the only areas that will be possible to live, but the vast majority of the human race will die off along with many other plants and animals. A clue to just how unpleasant things can get is contained within a narrow layer of strata recently exposed at a rock quarry in China, dating from the end of the Permian period, 251 million years ago. For reasons that are still not properly understood, temperatures rose by 6°C over just a few thousand years, wiping out up to 95 percent of species alive at the time. Only one large land animal survived the bottleneck: the pig-like Lystrosaurus. Clues as to how the world looks in a long-term extreme greenhouse state also come from the Cretaceous period, 144 to 65 million years ago, when there was no ice on either Pole and much of Europe and North America was flooded by the higher seas. Tropical crocodiles swam in the Canadian high Arctic, while breadfruit trees grew in Greenland. The oceans were incredibly hot: in the tropical Atlantic they may have reached 42°C, while at the North Pole itself, the oceans were as warm as the Mediterranean is today. The tropics and subtropics were so hot that no forests grew, and desert belts probably extended into the heart of modern-day Europe.

No, it's not a moot point, you just want to dodge the question because you know very well how rightwing media would have covered the story! Talk about going after the children, one of your heroes Rush Limbaugh had the gall to make fun of Chelsea Clintons looks when she was only 13 years old! The whining about causing harm to Sarah Palin's child is just more Republican hypocrisy!

That is a slogan, not an argument! You still have not given any reason why we should regard a non-sentient accumulation of cells as a person, other than saying that it will someday become a person( providing it is given sustenance and nourishment from the mother's womb). Let's try another situation where right to life would depend on someone else's involuntary cooperation: Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser is conducting a research study online to look for underlying principles beneath the moral decision-making process that people make. If you have the time,you can take the Moral Sense Test and answer a few hypothetical moral problems that often involve deciding between the lesser of two evils or choosing between competing rights. Anyway, one of the questions I recall had someone in the hospital who was discovered to possess a rare blood type needed by another patient who is an important public figure. While unconscious, the subject was hooked up by intravenous to the VIP and informed after he regained consciousness that they wanted him to remain connected for the next 30 days or so to save the other man. Now, it's one thing if the person could remain out of charity or altruistic reasons and put up with being used to sustain another life, but should he be morally obligated to do so? Every time someone says that the embryo or fetus's right to life is pre-eminent, that's what they're asking the prospective mother to do! In a right to life paradise, there is no consent asked for; the pregnant woman is informed that she is going to sustain and carry around that developing fetus and she has no say in the matter! To make this happen in the real world, a pro life zealot like Sarah Palin would have to criminalize abortion and charge the abortionists and the women seeking abortions with fetal homicide. In a pro life paradise like El Salvador, this has mean't that there have been cases of young women coming into hospitals with severe internal bleeding, being manacled to their hospital beds if the attending physician finds evidence such as a perforated uterus, that would indicate that an abortion has been performed. The pro life argument is an unrealistic, utopian concept that will be ugly and bring misery and hardship if it is carried out in Canada or the United States, just as it has in El Salvador! Unfortunately, at the other end of the abortion debate, the absolute pro choice supporters who would not have any restrictions even in cases where women are having abortions for frivolous reasons like sex selection, minor birth defects that can be repaired such as club feet or cleft palate, or to take revenge on the prospective father after a nasty argument -- they are afraid to invade the realm of privacy rights. There are situations where abortions shouldn't be allowed. Regarding that topic of sex selection, there are concerns from government officials in China and India that women are aborting female fetuses because they want or are compelled to provide a male offspring. So, yes there are problems with the opposite side of the debate from people who want virtually all moral decisions to be private and off limits to any higher principles.