1) McCain won't even remotely attempt to tie this to Obama.
I don't think that is necessarily true - even if McCain doesn't directly comment, that's not to say that other's wont (I'm fairly sure Bill O`Reilly will have something to say for example).
The Palin email hacking was a big news story in the US but barely registered in the news media in other countries around the world (even those that do follow the election closely).
2) In America, the rich old white male (especially one who doesn't know how many homes he owns) is never seen as the underdog to the young black man, even if he is.
Palin is more of an underdog than Obama, the people are more interested in Palin at the moment than either Obama or McCain and the republicans know this. Why else would it have been suggested that McCain and Palin campaign together even though traditionally the Pres/VP candidates for each party campaign independently.
3) Most of our worst leaders weren't noobs.
I would never suggest that McCain isn't a good candidate, as that's simply not true... I just think there were more qualified VP candidates than Palin and I think it was an irresponsible political stunt.
(And don't get me wrong, I'm terrified as shit of having her as President, but it's not due to her inexperience).
Agreed. It was 4am when I wrote my original post, so perhaps I should have left in the original bits I deleted about my thoughts on Palin's stance on creationism and banning of books
Anyway, I've said what I thought, I expected to get downmodded to hell but I'll leave it at that and head to bed.
1: The Palin email hacking wasn't a particularly big story in the US media either -- I don't recall seeing it as the top story on any newspaper, although admittedly it hasn't exactly been a slow news week. Overall the incident is a net win for the Republicans (it could easily have been a net loss if anything really incriminating had been found) but it's a small story in the scheme of things, and it'll drift into the background noise as soon as next week's minor (or perhaps major) political scandal happens.
2) If google trends were a good indicator for elections, then our president would be "britney spears naked pictures" with "generic viagra" as her VP.
3) It's possible you might have heard some of the many false rumours about some of Sarah Palin's positions -- doing a bit of research might put your mind at ease on some of those.
In particular, she never supported putting anything other than evolution on the school curriculum, and she never tried to ban any books either. (Oh and while we're at it, she doesn't support abstinence-only sex education and she didn't pose in a bikini holding a rifle either.)
2) If google trends were a good indicator for elections, then our president would be "britney spears naked pictures" with "generic viagra" as her VP.
Yet you have Arnold Schwarzenegger as Californian Governor?
In countries where voting is compulsory, it is generally the more "visible" candidate that wins. So visibility is definitely a factor in politics. Politics is all about perception.
3) It's possible you might have heard some of the many false rumours about some of Sarah Palin's positions
I never said that they were true (I had actually written it but removed it because it would have tilted my argument more towards Palin bashing and less about the general argument I was trying to make)- Politics is all about perception, that's why there is a lot of mudslinging and misinformation.
doing a bit of research might put your mind at ease on some of those.
she never tried to ban any books either.
She may have not formally instigated a process into banning books, but that doesn't mean that when she spoke to Ms Ellons (the Wasillan librarian at the time) about how she should go about getting books banned and then threatening to fire her for not having full support that it wasn't an issue.
> She may have not formally instigated a process into banning books, but that doesn't mean that when she spoke to Ms Baker (the Wasillan librarian at the time) about how she should go about getting books banned
That's not what she asked. Moreover, why should librarians be the last word on book selection? (Librarians are political creatures too.)
> and then threatening to fire her for not having full support that it wasn't an issue.
Palin fired the librarian for supporting a political rival.
> Moreover, why should librarians be the last word on book selection? (Librarians are political creatures too.)
Realistically, for a country who holds some core ideologies such as the freedom of speech and the seperation of church and state, having a politician want to ban books because of religious views supports neither of these ideologies.
The reprinted article was removed from the Frontiersman website (the newspaper that ran the original story in 1996) but Google's cache still has it here.
> Palin fired the librarian for supporting a political rival.
The point isn't that she fired the librarian for supporting a political rival, the point is that this woman has views that could be considered ... damn whats the word I'm looking for... it's like counterproductive. Non-progressive would be a good fit, but its not the word I'm looking for.
> Realistically, for a country who holds some core ideologies such as the freedom of speech
Which doesn't apply here, because there's no right to govt sponsored speech.
> and the seperation of church and state, having a politician want to ban books because of religious views supports neither of these ideologies.
Palin didn't try to get books taken out of the library, let alone ban them.
There's no "right" to the govt buying certain books. Libraries refuse to buy books every day. They refuse to accept book donations every day. They take books off the shelves every day.
Do you really think that a community can be forced to pay for a library that doesn't do as the community wants?
> The point isn't that she fired the librarian for supporting a political rival, the point is that this woman has views that could be considered
How about arguing against those views honestly instead of making up bogus charges?
having a politician want to ban books because of religious views supports neither of these ideologies.
I'm not sure how you go from Palin asking about banning books to the assumption that she wanted to ban books, and for specifically religious reasons. Why do you not assume that she heard complaints about books from her constituents, and wanted to know in advance what would happen if they actively wanted to ban books, and the librarian didn't?
I think its more her epistemology that scares me than any one or two particular stances. It would be yet another President who thinks it better to make decisions based on their interpretation of a 2,000 year old book than through science, logic, and reason. We've seen what 8 years of rabid anti-intellectualism can do to us, and the ill effects might start compounding rapidly.
I hardly think it's fair to take someone's religious beliefs and infer their intellect. Someone's beliefs about the unknowable (or lack thereof) doesn't have a causative effect on their intellect in any way I can determine.
Imagine the power a person would have as president: being able to call up the SEC chairman or the Fed chairman for an hour gives him more power than any entepreneur I know. If Bush is a complete bumbling idiot, surely some enterprising entepreneur would have been able to outsmart him in an election. Seeing as how that didn't happen, I'm forced to conclude he's at least slightly more intelligent than he appears.
Have you ever heard Tony Blair speak for any length of time? Blair appears to share many of the same views as Bush, but tends to express them much more clearly. I don't agree with Blair on many points, but the reason I disagree is not because Blair is an idiot; it's because he is working from a worldview / set of assumptions that I don't share.
I'm voting you up and asking you expand your observation.
We've seen what blind rationalism and blind belief both can do in 300 years of having people attempt to run their own governments. Your concerns are hardly new, and there's a lot of history to draw upon.
A moderate balance of faith in something greater than ourselves, humility, and the ability to hold reason as the highest of all virtues seems to work best -- or at least it has in our country's history.
Pure faith and pure logic alone are funny things -- they tend to bend to the emotional and cultural currents of those espousing them. And usually without the person's awareness.
We've had radical swings between rationalism (such as when we were founded), to faith, back to rationalism again, and back to faith. Each generation feels like it is the first or the only one going through something. We've been here before, and we'll be here again.
Hope I'm not trolling for an argument. That is not my intention, anyway.
The thing about faith and reason is this: You can't have one without the other. All reasoning must be from some first principles and first principles are always a matter of faith.
I don't think that is necessarily true - even if McCain doesn't directly comment, that's not to say that other's wont (I'm fairly sure Bill O`Reilly will have something to say for example).
The Palin email hacking was a big news story in the US but barely registered in the news media in other countries around the world (even those that do follow the election closely).
2) In America, the rich old white male (especially one who doesn't know how many homes he owns) is never seen as the underdog to the young black man, even if he is.
Absolutely agree, but have you looked at the trends data of McCain/Palin/Obama lately? (http://google.com/trends?q=obama%2C+mccain%2C+palin&ctab...)
Palin is more of an underdog than Obama, the people are more interested in Palin at the moment than either Obama or McCain and the republicans know this. Why else would it have been suggested that McCain and Palin campaign together even though traditionally the Pres/VP candidates for each party campaign independently.
3) Most of our worst leaders weren't noobs.
I would never suggest that McCain isn't a good candidate, as that's simply not true... I just think there were more qualified VP candidates than Palin and I think it was an irresponsible political stunt.
(And don't get me wrong, I'm terrified as shit of having her as President, but it's not due to her inexperience).
Agreed. It was 4am when I wrote my original post, so perhaps I should have left in the original bits I deleted about my thoughts on Palin's stance on creationism and banning of books
Anyway, I've said what I thought, I expected to get downmodded to hell but I'll leave it at that and head to bed.