Anchorage Alaska Has Something to say…
September 16, 2008 by Fran · Leave a Comment
Anchorage Alaska Has Something to say…
“This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here.~ Progressive Alaska
Then, the infamous Eddie Burke showed up. He tried to talk to the media, and was instantly surrounded by a group of 20 people who started shouting O-BA-MA so loud he couldn’t be heard. Then passing cars started honking in a rhythmic pattern of 3, like the Obama chant, while the crowd cheered, hooted and waved their signs high.”~Alaska Real
Mudflats writes:
o, as I jettisoned myself from the jaws of the ‘Drill Baby Drill’ crowd and toward the mystery rally at the library, I felt a bit apprehensive. I’d been disappointed before by the turnout at other rallies. Basically, in Anchorage, if you can get 25 people to show up at an event, it’s a success. So, I thought to myself, if we can actually get 100 people there that aren’t sent by Eddie Burke, we’ll be doing good. A real statement will have been made. I confess, I still had a mental image of 15 demonstrators surrounded by hundreds of menacing “socialist baby-killing maggot” haters.
It’s a good thing I wasn’t tailgating when I saw the crowd in front of the library or I would have ended up in somebody’s trunk. When I got there, about 20 minutes early, the line of sign wavers stretched the full length of the library grounds, along the edge of the road, 6 or 7 people deep! I could hardly find a place to park. I nabbed one of the last spots in the library lot, and as I got out of the car and started walking, people seemed to join in from every direction, carrying signs.
Never, have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here.
*Hat tip to Enigma @ Watergate Summer for posting links to these blogs
Palin ~ A Bridge to Nowhere
September 4, 2008 by Fran · 5 Comments
What is it that bothers me so about Palin?
First, it’s the doublespeak. While touting anti abortion, & abstinence, we are asked to respect the family’s privacy on this personal matter, while at the same time Republicans are making laws and stacking the courts with judges who would deny us our ability to make equally personal choices of our own.
Then it’s the double standard. Without making a personal judgement on teen pregnancy, it is a program of the Bush administration- the abstinence program that has the teen pregnancy rate up for the first time in 14 years.
This is a failed policy. Not only has it led to more teen pregnancies, it is a double whammy- it is coupled with the idea that funding teen parent support programs, sex education & healthcare, are considered “pork barrel spending”.
Where’s the Substance? We’ve heard Hockey Mom, PTA, and Mayor. We’ve heard about the family pregnancy issue.
We’ve not heard about Foreign policy. Where she stands on the Iraq War, Gitmo, Iran, Afghansitan. The US economy, the mortgage crisis, global warming, funding education.
We have heard she fired the Wasilla Alaska librarian for not banning books, and she fired anyone who did not agree with her agenda.
Palin did run a small Alaska suburb as Mayor. A population under 7000. She handled such matters as should they pave dirt roads, and putting a financially unfruitful sports complex project ahead of installing sewers. Although the Mayoral position of Wasilla is non partisan, she made it partisan.
Just read an excellent editorial by Ellen Goodman:
“The Straight Talk Express twisted itself into a pretzel trying to defend her qualifications to be commander in chief. More to the point, the mother of five had a personal story meant to capture the imagination of the American people, whose minds were beginning to wander ominously to such non-entertaining narratives as the Iraq war and the economy.
*snip*
Then along came the news that her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, is pregnant. Immediately, the “family values” folks who have fashioned a political wedge out of moral judgments began insisting that anyone who remarked on this baby bump was an insensitive invader of privacy.
But let’s not forget that it’s the right wing that made social issues into a political issue. The right wing decided that pregnancy was not a matter of private decision-making but a harsh and unrelenting political battle.
Palin opposes sex education programs that go beyond abstinence only.
*snip*
John McCain, an unrelenting opponent of abortion, was once asked whether the government should provide contraception and replied, “You’ve stumped me.” The Republican platform is not similarly stumped with its implacable opposition to every abortion and its renewed “call for replacing ‘family planning’ programs for teens with increased funding for abstinence education, which teaches abstinence until marriage as the responsible and expected standard of behavior.”
Pregnancy is indeed private. Decisions are to be discussed and determined in a family. But the party meeting in St. Paul, Minn., would put decisions about pregnancy in the hands of the government and replace sex information with disinformation. No, you don’t have to pass judgment on a 17-year-old to pass judgment on these unrelenting policymakers.
Sarah Palin? So far, she looks like a Bridge to Nowhere.”
My commentary on Palin’s RNC Speech:
I found her speech to have very little substance. Her lengthy introduction to her large family, including 5 children, and parents took up a whole lot of time that should have been used to tell us about her platform specifics.
I don’t care that her husband is a champion snow mobile racer~ I honestly don’t. I sincerely believe the people whose mortgages are about to foreclose, or who must file for bankruptcy because they do not have health care coverage really did not tune in to get the extensive low down on her family tree.
I think Palin showed just how desperate she was– she discounted Obama’s entire resume by playing loose and sloppy with facts– he’s “just a community organizer”.
8 years in the Illinois Legislature
Harvard Law School Grad
2 years of teaching Constitutional law @ the College level
4 years as a US Senator
He also did community organizing & practiced as a Civil Rights Attorney.
So for her, and her podunk Hockey Mom, PTA, Mayor of a tiny suberb “governmental experience”, discounting Obama’s accomplishments was just pure bullshit.
If you don’t have much to tout about yourself, then you are reduced to attacking the person you are running against. If that is in fact the case– this tough talking lady is really running scared, and she should be.
For her to proclaim on National TV that she herself has more experience than Obama & Biden combined was ludicrous.
Biden himself has served in the US Senate since 1973. Thirty five years of experience.on the Foreign Relations Committee, and the Senate Judiciary Committee. That means Biden has been dealing with Federal Foreign Affairs since Palin was 9 years old.
As one pundit put it– it is one thing to read a prepared speech in front of an adoring crowd… quite another to answer real questions in a debate setting on complex foreign affair issues.
I hope anyone who has the wherewithall to listen to what the RNC is serving up, it would be helpful to have an interpretive guide to terminology:
- Energy Independence = Drill for Oil
- Lower Taxes = For the Rich
- Alternate Energy = Nuclear Power Plants & a National Nuclear Waste Dump
- Clean Coal = Delusion
- Lower Fuel costs = Sacrifice Arctic Natl. Wildlife Refuge/Kiss Polar Bears Goodbye
- Attack Obama = Easier to talk about than actual issues
- Hockey Mom, PTA = I have no Foreign Affairs knowledge whatsoever
It is hard to imagine a McCaine regime could be even more oppressive and mismanaged, than the Bush adminstration- but I believe that would be the case.
The more I learn of Palin’s political resume, I am convinced her path is abuse of power, with limited knowledge ~ a dangerous combination.
The American Gothic image the republicans would like to portray.
The surreal likeness of something a little more close to reality.
McCain Chooses VP
August 29, 2008 by Fran · Leave a Comment
“WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, campaign officials told NBC News on Friday.
She would be the first woman to serve on a Republican presidential ticket. The pro-life Palin would also be the first Alaskan ever to appear on a national ticket.
Palin, 44, was elected Alaska’s first woman governor in 2006.”
“She is three years Obama’s junior, as well, and McCain has made much in recent weeks of Obama’s relative lack of experience in foreign policy and defense matters.
*snip*
Under investigation for firing
On Aug. 1, Palin scored a major victory when the Alaska legislature passed a bill that authorizes her administration to award a license to TransCanada Alaska to build a 1,715-mile natural gas pipeline from Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope to a hub in Canada.
The pipeline would be the largest construction project in the history of North America. If completed as hoped within ten years, it would ship 4.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day. The United States imported about 10 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in 2007.
But Palin’s seemingly bright future was clouded in late July when the state legislature voted to hire an independent investigator to find out whether she tried to have a state official fire her ex-brother-in-law from his job as a state trooper.
*snip*
They have five children. Their son, Track, enlisted in the U.S. Army on Sept. 11, 2007.
Palin gave birth to their fifth child, Trig, last April. The baby boy has Down syndrome, a genetic abnormality that impedes a child’s intellectual and physical development.
Palin made a name for herself in Alaska politics by serving as mayor of Wasilla City for six years.
Wasilla City:
Population 5469
Households 1979
34% Under age 18
Median age 29.7
Average Income $48,226
Average Home price $137,700
Approx 2118 homes
Are you kidding?
In 1984, after winning the Miss Wasilla contest earlier that year, Palin finished second in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant which won her a scholarship to help pay her way through college. In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.
On September 11, 2007, the Palins’ eighteen-year-old son Track, eldest of five, joined the Army. He now serves in an infantry brigade and will be deployed to Iraq in September 2008. She also has three daughters: Bristol, 17; Willow, 13; and Piper, 7. On April 18, 2008, Palin gave birth to her second son, Trig Paxson Van Palin, who has Down syndrome. She returned to the office three days after giving birth.
She hunts, eats moose hamburger, ice fishes, rides snowmobiles, and owns a float plane.
Palin holds a lifetime membership with the National Rifle Association. She admits that she used marijuana when it was legal in Alaska, but says that she did not like it.
Her husband, Todd, is a Native Yup’ik Eskimo. Outside the fishing season, Todd works for BP at an oil field on Alaska’s North Slope.
This is the best the Republicans could do?
A Mother of 5, with an infant not yet a year old, who has Down’s Syndrome?
6 years experience running a tiny town as Mayor in Alaska?
Under investigation for firing of a State Trooper?
Clearly the republicans have thrown in the towel on this election.
Crosposted at Ramblings.
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