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solarbirdReportedly, the GOP is going to give Gov. Palin the vetting Senator McCain's campaign did not. Meanwhile, here, go watch McCain campaign wonk Tucker Bounds claim that Gov. Palin has military experience by virtue of the Alaska National Guard being sent to Iraq. That's pretty lulzworthy, right? Newt Gingrich is certainly piling on the praise, calling her the most exciting new personality we've seen since John F. Kennedy. I guess "exciting" is one word for it.
But the fundamentalists sure do love her - to the tune of a $7 million fundraising bounce. I mean, they really, really like her. They like that she's a Creationist and goes for the 'Scientific Creationism' bullshit. They like that she's opposed to any form of sex education other than abstinence-only (and yes, I will take the cheap shot of noting how well that worked for her 17-year-old pregnant daughter, thanks). They like that she's a member of a fundamentalist evangelical church. They like her so much that James Dobson (Focus on the Family, various sockpuppet groups) has switched from never, ever voting for McCain to saying he has "not been so excited about a political candidate since Ronald Reagan."
Presumably they also like that she has no awareness of history, stating in 2006 that if having "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it was good enough for her. (The Pledge was written in 1892; the phrase "Under God" was not added until 1954.) I'm not being entirely facetious about that; like with their bullshit "creation science," they've created a bullshit religious history of the US that attempts to paint most of the signers of the Constitution as followers of a particular breed of fundamentalist orthodoxy not invented until another 100+ years later. So she's right onboard with their target demographic in that.
But seriously, this has accomplished a few things: 1: People aren't talking about McCain's record of support for Chief Executive Bush anymore - at least, not for the moment. He's set up the sideshow, and that's important for him. And 2: it has brought the fundamentalists onboard, as I suggested last time I discussed the news. 3: Everyone is talking about McCain again. He loves that. In terms of making a splash, he wanted to make one, and he did. If these are the things you care about, then, well, mission accomplished.
But the fundamentalists sure do love her - to the tune of a $7 million fundraising bounce. I mean, they really, really like her. They like that she's a Creationist and goes for the 'Scientific Creationism' bullshit. They like that she's opposed to any form of sex education other than abstinence-only (and yes, I will take the cheap shot of noting how well that worked for her 17-year-old pregnant daughter, thanks). They like that she's a member of a fundamentalist evangelical church. They like her so much that James Dobson (Focus on the Family, various sockpuppet groups) has switched from never, ever voting for McCain to saying he has "not been so excited about a political candidate since Ronald Reagan."
Presumably they also like that she has no awareness of history, stating in 2006 that if having "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance was good enough for the Founding Fathers, it was good enough for her. (The Pledge was written in 1892; the phrase "Under God" was not added until 1954.) I'm not being entirely facetious about that; like with their bullshit "creation science," they've created a bullshit religious history of the US that attempts to paint most of the signers of the Constitution as followers of a particular breed of fundamentalist orthodoxy not invented until another 100+ years later. So she's right onboard with their target demographic in that.
But seriously, this has accomplished a few things: 1: People aren't talking about McCain's record of support for Chief Executive Bush anymore - at least, not for the moment. He's set up the sideshow, and that's important for him. And 2: it has brought the fundamentalists onboard, as I suggested last time I discussed the news. 3: Everyone is talking about McCain again. He loves that. In terms of making a splash, he wanted to make one, and he did. If these are the things you care about, then, well, mission accomplished.
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(frozen) no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 12:46 pm (UTC)Obama also has "no awareness of history," and the history that he's demonstrated "no awareness of" includes the diplomatic history of America in the 20th century, with his hilarious statement about Roosevelt "negotiating with America's enemies" as a precedent for why he should. And Obama, unlike Palin, is actually running for President. So this is a line of debate the Democrats probably don't want to open.
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 02:30 pm (UTC)I'm a bit confused; you're suggesting that negotiations with Imperial Japan in 1940 and 1941 to try to avert the war should have never been attempted, on the basis that they failed? (As Roosevelt assumed they would, obviously, but that doesn't mean they weren't serious.) Or do you mean the Roosevelt administration should not have negotiated with the Soviet Union in the 1930s?
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 03:07 pm (UTC)I'm a bit confused; you're suggesting that negotiations with Imperial Japan in 1940 and 1941 to try to avert the war should have never been attempted, on the basis that they failed? (As Roosevelt assumed they would, obviously, but that doesn't mean they weren't serious.) Or do you mean the Roosevelt administration should not have negotiated with the Soviet Union in the 1930s?
You are a bit confused.
Neither Japan nor the Soviets were our "enemies" at the time FDR negotiated with them.
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Date: 2008-09-02 03:36 pm (UTC)North Korea is a bit more of a threat than Iran, in that it might conceivably be able to attack the US West Coast at some point soon. But it's still nowhere on par with Japan or the USSR at the relevant time periods.
I'll also point out that the Bush administration, despite its belligerence, is using diplomacy currently to deal with both Iran and North Korea, exactly as Obama has suggested. In fact, Obama seems to be leading them into the right policy around the world, most notably in Iraq where the Bush administration is negotiating a timetable with the Maliki government that matches what Obama's been talking about for years.
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Date: 2008-09-02 04:01 pm (UTC)You're talking about "threat levels" rather than "enmity." They are two separate things: Britain today poses a much greater threat to America than does Cuba, but Britain is our ally while Cuba is a likely enemy.
Before Pearl Harbor, the Soviet Union was not and Japan was only very indirectly attacking America. Iran, right now, is launching armed attacks against our formal ally Iraq and our troops in the field in Iraq.
In fact, during the period in which FDR had most of his negotiations with the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was America's formal ally, during World War II. As for Japan, the Japanese only became potential enemies in 1937 (when they attacked China, threatening the Open Door Policy, and semi-accidentally sunk one of our gunboats) and did not become actual enemies until the Pearl Harbor attack.
The other examples he gave: Truman and JFK, were poor ones. Truman negotiated with the Soviets when they were our allies in World War II; JFK's Berlin Summit was a miserable failure and the botched negotiations are held by historians to be one cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Obama's statement showed ignorance of major points of US diplomatic history, and he is running for President. Palin's statement showed ignorance of a rather minor point of Americana (the precise details of the adoption of parts of the Pledge of Allegiance), and she's only running for Vice-President.
I'll also point out that the Bush administration, despite its belligerence, is using diplomacy currently to deal with both Iran and North Korea, exactly as Obama has suggested.
Yes, but Bush is using this to buy time on secondary potential fronts, not in the delusion that real long-term peace with Iran or North Korea is possible.
In fact, Obama seems to be leading them into the right policy around the world, most notably in Iraq where the Bush administration is negotiating a timetable with the Maliki government that matches what Obama's been talking about for years.
Bush has done so only after winning the victory. Obama wanted to pull out at a time when doing so would have meant defeat. That's rather a big difference.
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Date: 2008-09-02 05:59 pm (UTC)What victory? Thousands of dead soldiers, tens of thousands of wounded ones, and many, many billions of tax dollars spent?
no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 06:17 pm (UTC)What victory? Thousands of dead soldiers, tens of thousands of wounded ones, and many, many billions of tax dollars spent?
You're arguing that only losing a few thousand people KIA and a few tens of thousand WIA in a years-long war means that it's not a victory? How many would we have to lose before you would deem it adequate?
(I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you're aware that this is a historically low butcher's bill)
Shall I take it that you are yielding the more important point, that there is a big difference between Bush and McCain (on the one hand) and Obama (on the other) regarding this issue, in that Obama was willing to withdraw before we won, while Bush and McCain are only willing to withdraw after our victory?
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Date: 2008-09-02 06:24 pm (UTC)No, I'm arguing that was the only verifiable outcome of this little bit of Bush Administration adventurism. Dead and wounded soldiers, and billions upon billions of tax dollars wasted. Let's whoop it up for victory!
Shall I take it that you are yielding the more important point
No. The troops never should have been there in the first place, and should be withdrawn immediately.
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Date: 2008-09-02 06:51 pm (UTC)No, I'm arguing that was the only verifiable outcome of this little bit of Bush Administration adventurism. Dead and wounded soldiers, and billions upon billions of tax dollars wasted. Let's whoop it up for victory!
The defeat of Saddam's regime and the Ba'athist and Al Qaeda insurgencies, the reduction of the Shi'ite insurgency, and the stablization and empowerment of the liberal democratic Iraqi regime aren't "verifiable" outcomes? Strange, both sides of the American aisle have now pretty much admitted to this, and both the Al Qaeda and Shi'ite insurgencies have been begging for help on the ground that they are losing (*). Are you privy to some information of which I am unaware, causing you to believe that we have not, in fact, won the war in Iraq?
Shall I take it that you are yielding the more important point ...
No. The troops never should have been there in the first place, and should be withdrawn immediately.
And it makes no difference whether we withdraw them in defeat, or in victory?
I suspect it makes rather a large difference to the Iraqi people, who get to go on living free instead of being slaughtered by a dictatorship, after our troops withdraw.
Or don't the Iraqis matter to you?
===
(*) Saddam's regime, and the Ba'athist insurgency deriving from it, have utterly ceased to exist.
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Date: 2008-09-02 07:18 pm (UTC)Point of fact, there was no Al Qaeda insurgency in Iraq until the US occupied that nation, an occupation that came about only because the Bush Administration presented Saddam's regime as a threat to the US.
I know it's fashionable in rightwing circles to revise history so that all the talk about massive numbers of Iraqi WMDs waiting to be handed over to Al Qaeda never happened and instead the war was a mission of international justice on behalf of oppressed Iraqis, but please save it for the dim of wit.
Strange, both sides of the American aisle have now pretty much admitted to this
Well, if our political masters in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party and their respective supporters have come to that conclusion, I should just shut up and fall in line.
Are you privy to some information of which I am unaware, causing you to believe that we have not, in fact, won the war in Iraq?
I don't see the lives lost or the tax dollars spent as a victory.
Or don't the Iraqis matter to you?
Don't fool yourself. This war had nothing to do with the Iraqis. If Saddam had still been a useful tool for US interests, he'd still be in power. I care that the Iraqi people have always been nothing more than pawns in a power game.
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Date: 2008-09-02 08:56 pm (UTC)Point of fact, there was no Al Qaeda insurgency in Iraq until the US occupied that nation, an occupation that came about only because the Bush Administration presented Saddam's regime as a threat to the US.
I know, and I never said that there was. There were no major insurgencies until we defeated Saddam's regime.
I know it's fashionable in rightwing circles to revise history so that all the talk about massive numbers of Iraqi WMDs waiting to be handed over to Al Qaeda never happened ...
Actually, the fear was what Saddam's Iraq would do with the WMD's. However, the cause of the war was the Iraqi violation of the truce terms, which comprised more than just the WMD inspections.
... and instead the war was a mission of international justice on behalf of oppressed Iraqis, but please save it for the dim of wit.
I never made the claim, so you need not worry that I am implying you are "dim of wit." Of course, you may be implying this about yourself, with your obvious inability to comprehend what I wrote.
Strange, both sides of the American aisle have now pretty much admitted to this ...
Well, if our political masters in the Republican Party and the Democratic Party and their respective supporters have come to that conclusion, I should just shut up and fall in line.
What is your evidence or other reason for arguing that we have not actually won the war?
Are you privy to some information of which I am unaware, causing you to believe that we have not, in fact, won the war in Iraq?
I don't see the lives lost or the tax dollars spent as a victory.
Of course they aren't. Those would be the price of victory.
(Hmm, you do seem a bit "dim of wit" here, if you don't grasp the difference between the cost and the purchase!)
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Date: 2008-09-02 09:31 pm (UTC)It's hard to do much with phantom WMDs. Well, except for scaring Americans into supporting an unnecessary war. They seem to have been particularly useful for that.
However, the cause of the war was the Iraqi violation of the truce terms
I don't think that would have resulted in much initial support from the American people for a war without 9/11 and some resultant fear-mongering by both political parties.
Of course they aren't. Those would be the price of victory.
You know exactly what I mean. I don't think the American people were served or their interests defended by sending soldiers off to be killed or maimed while billions in tax dollars were wasted on a completely unnecessary war. If it was a win, who was it a win for?
no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 07:07 pm (UTC)That's an interesting Alternate History you have there. Where's the Point of Divergence?
In our time line, as you know, the closest we ever came to the Soviets being an outright enemy was our intervention on the White side in the Russsian Civil War, before the Communists actually came to power over the whole country. After the end of the Russian Civil War, the Soviets were not our "enemy" -- they could have best been described as an "unfriendly neutral." We notably helped the Soviet Union during their famines in this period.
FDR did recognize the Soviet Union on November 16th, 1933. I don't know that any "rather effective diplomacy" was involved there: American recognition was more to Russia's advantage than our own. Nor did we make any "formal alliance" with them at the time. In fact, during the 1930's the Soviets formed an economic alliance with Germany, the famous "Nazi-Soviet Pact."
What turned the Soviets into a "formal ally" was Hitler's invasion of the USSR on June 21st, 1941. I'm not sure how you imagine that FDR caused this with diplomacy, "effective" or otherwise. Once that happened, it didn't exactly take diplomatic brilliance to ally with the Soviet Union, which was fighting for her life.
At no point during this chronicle did FDR do "some rather effective diplomacy with the Soviet enemy and turned them into a formal ally." It might be nice for Obama's reputation if he had, but instead Obama proved himself seriously ignorant of some rather important history -- indeed, of history quite germane to the present diplomatic situation.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 09:12 pm (UTC)We weren't actually shooting at each other.
Methinks my original statement stands.
"FDR did some rather effective diplomacy with the Soviet enemy and turned them into a formal ally." ...?
When did this happen? Seriously. You're going out on a limb to try to defend Obama and make what he said magically true, so I want to hear from you when FDR did this, before the German invasion of Russia.
...
waiting
...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 08:56 pm (UTC)The country was already virtually destroyed by the sanctions, with hundreds of thousands of people dead. The country had no serious military force. Saddam was hanging on by a thread, supported by the population because they relied on him for survival. Nobody feared Iraq outside of the United States.
How could the occupation fail? It was obvious the country would fall apart as soon as it was attacked. Otherwise the US would never have invaded. You get rid of Saddam and the sanctions with one blow. Any resistance would have no significant outside support. And the US had such huge resources it could rebuild the country and repair the destruction of the last 15 years easily.
At first it looked good. The US forces destroyed unions, smashed political offices, arrested anyone with leadership potential, just erased them. They weren't even going to allow the pretense of Iraqi politics. The US opened up the whole economy to foreign takeover.
Somehow, the unbelievable happened. The US succeeded in creating a huge opposition to the occupation, and I don't mean the idiots setting off bombs. That's a military problem and you just deal with it. I mean massive non-violent resistance that refused to accept the demands of the occupation authorities. The US has been forced step by step to back off and accept Iraqi initiative.
The US should have crushed the armed resistance, which has limited internal support and almost no external support. It has somehow been incapable of crushing such weak opposition. It's a complete surprise.
The original war aim was to make sure Iraqis don't rule Iraq. But it looks like that goal may not happen now. You might get the unthinkable: A more or less sovereign, independent Iraq taking it's place in a loose Shiite alliance of Iran, Shiite Iraq, and possibly Shiite regions of Saudi Arabia.
All the significant oil resources of the region independent of Washington? US planners forced to focus influence on western hemisphere sources of oil?
That's not a victory, that's a catastrophe.
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Date: 2008-09-02 09:18 pm (UTC)It was? Since when?
The original war aim was to depose Saddam Hussein and install a democratic regime. This is what Bush said at the start, and this is what we actually did.
All the significant oil resources of the region independent of Washington? US planners forced to focus influence on western hemisphere sources of oil?
That's not a victory, that's a catastrophe.
You are making up your own "victory condition" based primarily on the theory that the war was All About Oil, and them berating Bush for failing to achieve it. But he's been trying to win his victory conditions, not the ones you made up.
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 07:26 pm (UTC)...that's... an interesting interpretation. Japan was subject to a US oil embargo when the US was the world's supplier of oil, active condemnation over its war expansion into China, and was fully expected to attack the US in the Philippines in order to get more access to the oil it needed to fuel its imperial ambitions. The USSR was actively promoting global communist revolution against all capitalist societies (including the western hemisphere and in the US), and the US, along with other western powers, had had ground forces in Russia trying to help the Whites in the Russian Civil War.
I'm not sure these can count as "friends."
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 08:59 pm (UTC)You're trying hard to redefine reality so that what Obama said was accurate, but it doesn't work with people who actually know the history.
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 09:07 pm (UTC)You have my apologies for me trying to take you seriously. Please to fuck off now.
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 09:22 pm (UTC)I forgive you for your rudeness, which I'm sure you regret by now. Or will regeret, when you crack a history book. :)
(frozen) no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 02:59 pm (UTC)Republicans should just adopt George Santayana as their mascot.
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Date: 2008-09-02 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 09:00 pm (UTC)Why should they be ironic about Islamofascism? And in what sense are McCain or Palin Islamofascist?
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Date: 2008-09-02 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 07:12 pm (UTC)The Republicans downsized their convention. So with hundreds of press people in town for an event that isn't happening, what do they do?
Go see Ron Paul's convention! (http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/09/01/rnc-downtime-a-boon-for-paul-rally/)
It's like their actively searching for more boxcars to add to the train wreck.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-02 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-04 05:44 pm (UTC)