7 posts tagged “governor”
Imagine you have little money and you are renting a room in a house. You pay most of your income to rent, but the people who own the house are not good with money. The people that own the house get 3 months behind on the mortgage and the house is in foreclosure. They suddenly get an offer for a credit card that will cover a part of the mortgage and save the house you are living in at least for a while longer. They decide to ask you if they should get the card to save the house and inform you that if they use this to save the house, they will have to raise the rent and if they do not they will lose the house and you will be evicted. WHAT CHOICE CAN YOU MAKE? You cannot afford more rent, you cannot be homeless, and you cannot imagine them suddenly getting any better with money even if they save the house and you will probably be in the same boat soon anyway.
This is how I see today’s vote in California. It is a lose, lose proposition with doom and gloom being preached by both sides of the argument. We are doomed if we vote yes, we are doomed if we vote no, and we are doomed if we don’t vote.
The only thing that is clear is that the government in California as it is has absolutely no ability to fix the problems here and the people are so divided that at either extreme that it will be this way for a long time.
I am about to vote, but what a crock all of this is. Vote yes and they get the credit card that will cover some of the debt, but also makes more and inevitably robs from something else to pay for it. This also means raised taxes in several areas.
Vote no and it’s the end of the world for our economy in California and we will be without fire fighters, and police etc. (according to the commercials).
We all must vote and have our voice, but what a choice.
All of the Republican rhetoric of the past few months stomped out by the McCain campaign. I will get to that in a minute, but I am not sure what will be worse for the Republican Party a loss in a week or an unlikely win. I believe that most of the American public (excepting the most diehard Republican “fans) already had a pretty good idea about much of all of this, but I think it is simply a vindication of the media that has been taking the brunt of the blame for creating these perceptions.
In case you have not heard all of this, there are endless reports of dissention in the McCain ranks centering on Governor Palin. The hero of the Republican party is now a “rogue” “diva” candidate undermining the McCain campaign. The pride and joy of the campaign has become the poster child for the statement “Pride cometh before the fall.”
The latest episode has to do with the fact that Sarah Palin decided to write her own script and inadvertently distract attention from the campaign by not letting the clothing argument die. The campaign over the past couple of days has drifted from “The Testing of Barack Obama” and “Joe the Plumber” to “Sarah the Rogue Diva.”
CNN has been reporting that members of the McCain camp are saying she has no relationships of trust with anyone in the campaign or even her own family. That she sees herself as the beginning and end of all wisdom. She is being described using words such as “diva” and “rogue” and on and on.
That however, is not the serious statements, those are just the entertainment to warm us up for the real bombs. We all remember the Katie Couric interview and some other early appearances where she looked lost. Then, after all of the talk about Senator Obama as some kind of rock star, the main defense for her presence on the campaign trail is her popularity. Then came all of the “media bias” talk about the sexism and the evil “leftwing” media trying to paint her as someone who has no idea what is going on and has no business running for vice president.
Now suddenly, sources of many of these arguments in her defense, are turning one-eighties from within the McCain Campaign. There are reports that members of the McCain camp are saying that she had a lack of understanding on some fundamental key issues on a level one person called “dramatic.” Another described her as the hardest candidate to get up to speed in history.
The rhetoric is still there about how she is being picked on or that people are being mean and sexist, and on and on. Let me spell this out. THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW HER BEST POLITICALLY ARE NOW SAYING THESE THINGS!
Again the Republican Party is doing the worst job of damage control imaginable. The polls show that people believe she is not qualified and is hurting Senator McCain, the media has been leaning that way, Republican Party members have one by one been leaning that direction, she is found guilty of previous ethics violations while on the campaign, she holds a rally for herself a week before the election when the actual candidate is behind in all polls, and now the leadership within the campaign is verifying what the public has been suspecting all along.
The weird part is the Republican folks are all over the media still rallying support around her far more than anything they are doing for Senator John McCain.
It is like a ship with a hole in it. The crew keeps trying to patch the hole but on the other side of the ship there is one crew member who keeps cutting holes on the other side of the ship. The crew keeps having to patch the new holes and is constantly being distracted from patching the original hole. The ship is sinking and now the “rogue” crewmember keeps punching more holes in the ship. If you were on the ship, what would you do with that crewmember? Apparently in the Republican camp has decided that the solution to the holes is to blame the mean people on the other boats.
The problem here is not policy and that is why nobody is focusing on policy, the problem is “WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY DOING IN THE REPUBLICAN CAMP?” This is the question that those of us who are not Republican are wondering and that is what the media is covering. Most of us are satisfied that Senator Joe Biden is not the best candidate in the world, but he is savvy enough to be a vice-president. He is no longer interesting.
But boy, when you spend all of your time getting your clips on television attacking somebody and complaining you turn even the person who is actually in the lead into the underdog and should not wonder why so many are so interested in seeing these Republican candidates beaten.
“A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.”
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
“Every reform movement has a lunatic fringe.”
“If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.”
“In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.”
“It is difficult to make our material condition better by the best law, but it is easy enough to ruin it by bad laws.”
“The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people.”
“The most practical kind of politics is the politics of decency.”
“The most successful politician is he who says what the people are thinking most often in the loudest voice.”
‘When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer "Present" or "Not guilty."’
“THE THINGS THAT WILL DESTROY AMERICA ARE PROSPERITY-AT-ANY-PRICE, PEACE-AT-ANY-PRICE, SAFETY-FIRST INSTEAD OF DUTY-FIRST, THE LOVE OF SOFT LIVING, AND THE GET-RICH-QUICK THEORY OF LIFE.”
The person quoted here is my favorite president of all time…Theodore Roosevelt. Strength, intelligence and straight forward, while also a man of honor and integrity and decency. (the decency is the biggest thing missing from all of the presidential campaigns of recent years.
Why are people and the media portraying the Republicans as the crazies or giving more positive press time to the Democrats? Is it possible that the Republican party has had such a string of ridiculous, over the top antics that those of us who are not diehard Republicans actually are beginning to view the party that way and the media is actually simply reflecting what people are starting to believe.
Here is an example. On the Sacramento (capitol of California) GOP website there has been this page tiring to tie Senator Obama to Osama Bin Laden and going so far as to talk about waterboarding Senator Obama. There are people like this guy in Virginia I wrote about the other day making repeated comments about race and that person who prayed the other day and tried to convince us the a victory for Barack Obama would somehow show the world that God is weak.
Of course, there is this Sarah Palin person who keeps crying about Liberal media not wanting her to speak and only taking interviews with the most right wing media possible. Then we have the people at the political rallies yelling out racial epithets and “kill him” etc.
I am an independent voter although I cannot remember the last time I voted for a Democrat for President and I was and remain a big fan of Ronald Reagan. Yet, the more I see of this campaign, the more I am beginning to sound like a far left wing liberal.
Think back to high school and homecoming. I was lucky enough to play football for a school that was relatively dominant in football so our homecoming rallies and games were pretty crazy. But, I always remember paying attention to the other mood of the people in the schools we were playing against.
When we had games at other schools and it was their homecoming (often schools we knew we could easily beat) they had the same kind of pep rallies, and just as much energy. People always had these (so called) “facts” that demonstrated that clearly they had the better team. They would argue and scream how their team was better. They would boo when we arrived and throw things at us. We even had people attack our team coming on to the field.
Then when we would score a symphony of boos and excuses would fly. Their cheerleaders would break into a cheer of “it’s alright, it’s okay, we’re gonna beat you anyway!” A few scores later the crowd would still be riled up and a little more angry. When we would leave (in victory) we left to boos and people talking about how we cheated and did this and that.
This is not my personality. If I know my team is terrible I will say “My team is terrible!” My response to having a terrible team is not to ratchet up the attacks on the other team and throw things at them call them names and so on. (I know that sounds absolutely crazy coming from a Raiders fan – and by the way MY TEAM IS TERRIBLE)
This is how the Republican party seems to me. Their team is doing terrible and it is looking like they may lose (Emphasis on the word may. There is still lots of time). Rather than focus on how to win, the McCain campaign is having pep rallies and bad mouthing the opposition and getting the supporters in an uproar. Now the supporters scream angry things even when the opposition is mentioned. They may throw things and threaten the other team and so on.
I if anyone understand the mentality. The problem for those of us who are not diehard Republicans is that we have a pretty good idea that people like this are not the kind we want running our government. We are in a time that demands leadership that is deeply grounded in reality and we are getting this partisan nonsense. In part the McCain campaign is doing this, but it would seem relatively normal if the rest of the party wasn’t going so far over the top.
That is the difference as to why the general population is developing a far better view of the Democrats as opposed to the Republicans. When people who support Senator Obama go crazy, the campaign goes out of it’s way to denounce the action and then steer completely clear of what was stated.
The McCain camp has been silent on many of these egregious acts including the ones the occur publically at their rallies. Even having manipulative prayers opening a rally right when it seemed that Senator McCain might be trying to calm things down. Then the bloodthirsty fans of this whole thing (in spite of the evidence that this will cause them to loose) is steadily calling for more attacks and such.
The truth is the attempts to scare the American population about Senator Obama do have that effect. The problem is that the way the Republican party acts in trying to get us scared of Senator Obama is actually more scary.
It’s like having a guy with a chainsaw wearing a “Leatherface” mask (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) screaming at me telling me to be scared of the “boogie man” that might be in my closet.
I desperately want to have two choices for president but this sort of behavior only can leave us with one choice unless you are a diehard Republican. I sincerely wish the McCain camp would do something to stop all of this madness.
I was wondering how long this was going to take. Rep. John Lewis (a Democrat from Georgia) pulled the race card on the tone of the McCain campaign this week.
This normally would anger me as much as the tone of the McCain camps past two weeks if it were not for the fact that people at McCain rallies were screaming things about killing Senator Obama and screaming out racial epithets without a flinch from the McCain camp until it hit the news.
I honestly do not believe that Senator McCain had any intention of playing on the racism of the people at those rallies and the rallies of Governor Sarah Palin. My suspicions seem to be confirmed by the very honorable move of Senator McCain when he started to finally speak out against such things.
What I think Senator McCain’s campaign is guilty of is attempting to play on the fears and anger of the people within the Republican Party to stir up votes. This can be a very effective move but, it is sort of like throwing bloody meat into a group of sharks. Sometimes you can get relatively controlled and expected results and sometimes the feeding frenzy can go completely out of control and the sharks will even bite each other (eyes closed) in the wild frenzy the ensues.
When Senator McCain tried to lower the temperature of the party a bit with some positive comments, the crowd actually started booing. It’s like the sharks were going crazy biting everything in site and suddenly he pulled the meat out of the water. The images I saw were the sharks wanting to jump into the boat to attack Senator McCain.
Rep. Lewis sure seems to have made his comments at a strange time. I am not sure why this was necessary no matter how one feels about what was going on.
I was encouraged to hear that the Obama camp immediately issued statements to the contrary. I am not sure that the statements of both candidates were not too late. Sort of like “unringing” the gong.
I also have to wonder if Rep. Lewis thinks he is helping Senator Obama or the country by throwing meat into another group of sharks. The McCain camp (in particular one Governor Sarah Palin) has been stirring the anger, fears, and tensions of the American people on both sides of the argument at one of the scariest times in our history. Now this Lewis person (which immediately brings the one word question “Who?” to my mind), seeing the escalated tensions decides to add more fuel to the fire.
What is wrong with these people? I have to wonder if they are seeking to create enough political unrest to implode our whole government system. If the tension of this presidential election is raised any more we may be able to classify this whole election as an act of terrorism before long.
I am not sure that this might not have been the more appropriate time to suspend campaigns. All this going to meet with the president for photo ops on bailouts is nowhere near as important as the escalation of tensions between the various demographics that make up out nation.
Imagine the candidates doing something like deciding to spend the next few days calming both sides down and unifying the country instead of focusing on getting elected. They could suspend the debate and just have interviews at different times where they answered the tough questions in front of an audience and thus eliminate the feeding of the reality TV hungry sharks that we have all become. Some of us circling sharks will be disappointed that we won’t see one of the candidates get chomped on, but the greater good would definitely be served.
What ever happened to the idea of doing what is right and serving the greater good?
Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin is still sticking to her focus on unifying the Republican Party. She stood up and took a courageous stand for what she believes in today. I am not sure it was the best political move in support of Senator John McCain, but it does energize the party and I think it does serve her future well.
Governor Palin came out and made a stand about her pro-life stance and did not beat around the bush about it.
This issue of abortion is for me a strange issue. I have my fairly strong feelings about this issue, but I am not convinced that this is the hill I want to die on.
What do I mean when I say this is not the hill I want to die on? Let’s step back and take a look at this issue. The entire nation has become completely polarized by this issue. If you want to see and angry exchange get people from either side of this issue together to discuss it. There have been fights, shootings, bombings, and won and lost elections over this one issue. I also have to wonder if people have been elected who would never have seemed qualified for whatever office it is if it were not for this issue.
I have had more than a few people tell me I would never vote for a person who is “for” or who is “against” abortion. I find this befuddling. Not the issue of abortion, but the fact that for this one issue, a person who would call themselves having the best interests of our nation in mind would absolutely ignore everything else about the candidates and vote for someone who may in fact not otherwise be a good candidate for the position.
During this election I have noticed that this issue has become so ridiculous that if Adolph Hitler were cloned and ran for president if he:
- Said he was “pro-choice” the Democrats would vote for him and rally around him.
- Said he was “pro-life” the Republicans would vote for him and rally around him.
I know this may seem like an extravagant exaggeration but is it? If you are one side of this debate you have probably noticed people from the other side who had some candidate that did or said something that clearly demonstrates that person is absolutely not qualified for the job and yet the person recites the quotes from the candidate and defends the person as if their very life depended upon it. Well guess what there are millions of people on both sides arguing and voting like this across the nation.
We are in a terrible recession, we are at war in two countries, some of the nations that are the scariest in the world are working on building nuclear weapons, the politicians that are supposed to be leading our nation are so polarized that they can hardly stand each other much less agree on anything, we have witnessed the first attack on the continental united states Pancho Villa, and the only issue many of us can see is if a person is for or against the possibility of a person having an abortion.
I am not trying to say this is not an important issue, but I am not willing to sacrifice my home, my children, our country, the lives of people in our military, and so on just to win on this one issue. That is exactly what someone is doing if this is the only issue or the main issue that determines who you vote for. The idea is ridiculous!
Neither side has a monopoly on idiots or liars. There are plenty of idiots and liars on both sides of this argument. If this becomes the main driving force behind why a person gets elected to any office we may in fact elect one of these idiots or liars to office without even looking at if that person is really qualified.
This is an important issue, but is absolutely not the biggest fish we have to fry right now!
What Sarah Palin has done is good, because it is an honest stand. The problem is how much impact her stand on this one issue alone will have on one group of people.
This in fact is the hill many are willing to die on. The problem is they might take the rest of us with them.
I have just watched footage on several channels of the McCain campaign trail with both angry Republican voters and angry speeches about forcing the media to discuss the items that the McCain camp is talking about. There was also angry discussion of how they are mystified at why Barack Obama is doing so well. One very angry gentleman, rambling loudly about having our heads examined because of the mere existence of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi.
I am one of those undecided independent voters everyone keeps talking about. I am a moderate social conservative and a moderate economic liberal (probably in the economic center) so I am a true independent that tends to lean ever so slightly Republican. I quite honestly cannot remember the last Democratic presidential candidate I have voted for (but I have voted for several Democrats as well as Republicans in other areas).
The last month and a half have not drawn me to either major candidate, but the last month and a half has definitely been driving me away from one campaign (which translates to away from one candidate).
The McCain campaign includes officials that were let go from previous Republican campaigns because of the negative campaign tactics, so the tone of what is going on is not surprising. Let me help this man and others with this question understand how at least a segment of those of us who call ourselves independents are thinking.
I have just watched and listened to the topic that has overpowered the drastic drop in the markets all over the world including ours. That topic is……too much detail in a close-up picture of Sarah Palin. I was struck by the audacity of the far right to interrupt reality with such stupidity. One woman, in trying to defend this, spent several minutes arguing that any woman would be angered by this Newsweek cover because one can see her blackheads, pimples, and mustache. How dare these people waste all of our time with such stupidity and at the same time say the media is favoring Barack Obama. If this garbage is what the Far Right is going to do with media coverage, please find some way to ensure that they get no more.
For the past few days, there have been reports of angry McCain supporters at Sarah Palin rallies doing things like:
- Yelling out “Kill him!”
- Yelling out “Off with his head!”
- Yelling racial epithets at an African American camera man
The big problem is not simply the fact that these are the people that are supporting Senator McCain. The biggest problem is that these, over the top, comments and activities were occurring and Governor Sarah Palin just took it all in stride as if these sorts of activities were okay as long as it is something negative about Senator Obama.
What would we do if we were all watching the television, President Bush is speaking, and a spectator screams out, you should kill the n*$$@*. Would we not be astonished if he did not say something about the comments?
The astonishing thing is that the extreme right wing does not realize that the response that diehard Republicans have at negative rhetoric from Senator McCain, Governor Palin, and Senator McCain’s wife will not have the same effect on those of us who everyone thinks are really going to make the difference (the independent voters).
I just heard a clip of one guy begging Senator McCain to step up the attacks and revisit the Reverend Wright issue and step up attacks on the Bill Ayers issue.
Then there are the clips of Sarah Palin asking the far right to try to force the media to participate by discussing these same negative topics more and more.
The McCain campaign is getting pummeled in the polls, and this nonsense has not even caught traction much less been successful yet and seems to be hurting more than helping. All of us know he is loosing and we know it is the usual time for the trailing candidate to ratchet up the attacks. But, these attacks if perceived to be over the top run the risk of making the attacker look like the desperate flailing of a drowning person. It is an odd phenomenon how many of those who are drowning accidently try to drown the very ones who would save them while they are flailing to save themselves. The flailing of the McCain camp may be an accidental attack on the very people who could save his chances.
Let spell it out for at least a segment of us undecided, independent voters.
We do not like it and will not vote for you under any circumstances if it continues much longer!
As McCain is finally finding a way to connect with the extreme of his party, he is distancing himself more and more from the voters most experts are going to make the difference. That means these tactics are distancing him more and more from the presidency.
People like myself remember the public outbursts of Senator McCain in the past and if he is trying to distance himself from all of that, crowds of angry people yelling things like “kill him” about the other candidate is probably not the best way to do that.
Because I am often traveling on the days we vote I get absentee ballots. I have mine sitting in front of me right now. I have everything filled out except my choice for president. I have been put off so much by the McCain camp over the past few weeks (particularly the past two) that I am giving him until next Wednesday to change all of this. I think even though I have been so put off, personally angered, personally offended, disgusted, and embarrassed (the whole planet is watching us) I feel this is a fair cooling off period for me. He has one week to stop shooting himself in the foot or at least one vote will have officially gone the other way.
I feel if he is this distant from reality as a candidate, he will be distant from reality as president.
P.S. I understand the Reverend Wright thing and the Bill Ayers thing and although I am not happy about these things, I am really not all that interested in hearing about the same nonsense over and over again and again. It just looks angry and “same old Washington” and actually angers me with all that is going on.
It is not my fault, the media’s fault, or Barack Obama’s fault that Senator McCain told the planet the economy is not his strength right before every economy worldwide collapsed.
