U.S. Presidential Election 2008

Take the first sentence, quote it, and jam it into google. You get c. 20 hits. including the identical text and the name of the author who issued this from a Hotmail account.

It could be real, but looks a bit like that Kurt Vonnegut "Wear Sunscreen" thing at first glance.

Yeah, I guess Snopes will be on it soon enough...

Barack Obama has NEVER supported a federal ban on gay marriage and never will. He also supports civil unions, something that Palin supposedly opposes, and he has previously been a consistent supporter of gay rights legislation in Illinois.

I think you are confused. A case had been brought to the Alaska Supreme Court where there was an eventual ruling that gay spouses should have equivalent spousal rights to heterosexual couples. Palin supported a referendum calling on the supreme court ruling to be overturned. However, despite the fact that the referendum got a majority and the bill had been submitted, Palin had to veto it because she was advised that to pass the legislation was now unconstitutional. Which makes it all the more laughable that the Log Cabin Republicans are now unbelievably claiming that her veto is an example of how she has positively legislated in favour of gay rights.

eh? I never said it wasn't. If I was black and she was a racist do you think I should respectfully excuse it because her "religion" told her to hate black people?

I can understand her position but I reserve the right to disagree with it as trenchantly as I can.

look if she was just sarah palin from down the road then yes I would probably excuse her bizarre religious views as just that. However, she is a candidate for the vice presidency who will be second in line to be leader of the free world behind a frail pensioner - I think that entitles gay americans and those of us who take an interest in these things to be very alarmed by her candidacy.

It was you who claimed that one should excuse her views on abortion as they were based on her "value system". I was just pointing out that a similar (and equally reduntant) justification had recently been used to excuse burying women alive. Personally, I find it appalling when any politician uses their religion to impose their value system on people who do not follow that religion.

McCain's not so frail.

Brickner also described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God's "judgment of unbelief" of Jews who haven't embraced Christianity.

"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real. When [Brickner's son] was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment — you can't miss it."

Palin was in church that day, Kroon said, though he cautioned against attributing Brickner’s views to her.

They're already on this one, which also shows that the leather miniskirt one earlier in this thread was photoshopped as well.

[Author of the aforementioned long email on palin] Anne Kilkenny describes herself as a 22-year Mat-Su resident, middle-aged housewife and at-home mom with a child in middle school and a retired, disabled spouse. She comes from a long line of independent-minded, public-spirited people and has been involved in education advocacy and legislative analysis for local PTAs. Prior to parenthood, she worked in the Alaska's seafood industry. She has a Social Science BA from the University of California, Berkeley

I'm curious how the persons on this thread who were so critical of Rev. Wright (particulalrly the ardent defenders of Israel) might react to this fact:

Palin's Church: Anti-Jewish Terror is "God's Judgment"

But what we see in Israel, the conflict that is spilled out throughout the Middle East, really which is all about Jerusalem, is an ongoing reflection of the fact that there is judgment. There is judgment that is going on in the land, and that’s the other part of this Jerusalem Dilemma. When Jesus was standing in that temple, He spoke that that judgment was coming, that there’s a reality to the judgment of unbelief. He said “I long to gather you, but...” what? “You were unwilling.” God never forces His way on human beings. And so because Jerusalem was unwilling to receive His grace, judgment was coming. He says, “Look, your house has left you desolate!” What did He mean by that? Remember where He is. He’s standing in the temple there in Jerusalem, the place where God had promised, through Moses,

I'm curious how you might describe a desire to steal federal land and cause the breakup of the Union?

None of these things makes Obama less than he is, but your constant belittling of him does in the minds of many. You need to realize that!

oh, and the comparisons just keep getting too good. Turns out, Palin's husband has ties with the Alaska Independence Party. I'm sorry, but wasn't a spouse's statement of merely being really proud seen as tantamount to treason? I'm curious how you might describe a desire to steal federal land and cause the breakup of the Union?

http://www.akip.org/faqs.html
Q: What is the Alaskan Independence Party?

A: An Alaskan political party whose members advocate a range of solutions to the conflicts between federal and local authority; from advocacy for state's rights, through a return to territorial status, all the way to complete independence and nationhood status for Alaska.

I have combed the schedule of events here without finding a single forum, workshop or kaffeeklatsch devoted to what John McCain and the Republican Party propose to do about America's short- and long-term economic challenges. I've found four panels on what to do about the Middle East, but not one on what to do about the Middle West.

Republican silence on economic matters stands in sharp contrast to the Democratic convention last week in Denver, where there were close to 20 forums on "green" jobs, reviving progressive taxation, balancing the budget, rebuilding infrastructure, the economy of alternative energy and the like.

But the economy is not all; the GOP's last best hope remains identity politics. In a year when the Democrats have an African American presidential nominee, the Republicans now more than ever are the white folks' party, the party that delays the advent of our multicultural future, the party of the American past. Republican conventions have long been bastions of de facto Caucasian exclusivity, but coming right after the diversity of Denver, this year's GOP convention is almost shockingly -- un-Americanly -- white. Long term, this whiteness is a huge problem. This year, however, whiteness is the only way Republicans cling to power. If the election is about the economy, they're cooked -- and their silence this week on nearly all things economic means that they know it.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain says his vice presidential pick, Sarah Palin, was already an experienced government official while his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, was working as a community organizer.

She wasn't. Palin was finishing college, getting married and working as a TV sportscaster when Obama was directing a church-based community group on Chicago's South Side in 1985-88.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/20...at-joe-n-2.html
The evening was full of Biden-isms, including the inevitable Obama/Osama slip, made when Biden was discussing the mountainous Afghanistan-Pakistan border "where Obama, Osama Bin Laden lives, and Obama wants to go to get him."

Mayor Palin: A Rough Record
[Former Wasilla mayor] Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

And for some, Ms. Palin’s first months in office here were so jarring — and so alienating — that an effort was made to force a recall. About 100 people attended a meeting to discuss the effort, which was covered in the local press, but the idea was dropped.

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Ann Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.

In 1996, Ms. Palin suggested to the local paper, The Frontiersman, that the conversations about banning books were “rhetorical

I've come to the conclusion that the Dems are afraid of Sarah Palin. Look at the attempts to smear her. How pathetic.

I find it quite bizarre that Palin's insisting that unmarried teenage girls keep their babies, but is intent on legislating away all the welfare programs that would enable those girls to finish school and not starve to death.

The duty of care she feels for these poor unwanted babies stops as soon as the baby's breathing air, apparently.

I've come to the conclusion that the Dems are afraid of Sarah Palin. Look at the attempts to smear her. How pathetic.

It is people like eurovol, much more than the candidate himself, who puts me off Obama.

Sarah Palin, would-be banner of books...
Time Magazine says that when Sarah Palin took office as mayor, she approached the town librarian and asked how to go about banning books from the town library:From Time Magazine, Sep. 02, 2008:

I am terrified of her, myself, yanksavage. People are seriously considering voting for McCain, with Palin on the ticket. This is scary shit.

WashPo: Sep. 2, 2008 - St. Paul -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee who revealed Monday that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant, earlier this year used her line-item veto to slash funding for a state program benefiting teen mothers in need of a place to live. After the legislature passed a spending bill in April, Palin went through the measure reducing and eliminating funds for programs she opposed. Inking her initials on the legislation -- "SP" -- Palin reduced funding for Covenant House Alaska by more than 20 percent, cutting funds from $5 million to $3.9 million. Covenant House is a mix of programs and shelters for troubled youths, including Passage House, which is a transitional home for teenage mothers.