U.S. Presidential Election 2008

And what about Obama and all the attention paid to the goings-on in his church? If that wasn't relegated to his private life, it doesn't seem Palin should be given an exemption.

Additional quotes from that speech.

I knew it would get press sooner or later!


A chat with Anne Kilkenny from Alaska

so true, this:

"PTA politics are the most painful politics of all. Most men don’t have a clue what it’s like to survive a mommy network. I worked on St. Dominic’s Home and School (PTA equivalent) for a year. Scott Berg is a piece of cake compared to a room full of women protecting their children."

Does a form of the PTA (Parent Teacher Association) exist in Germany? just curious how much say parents have in education here...

I'm a part of an eltern-kind initiative and it's the biggest stress factor in my life!!!

Yes it's called Eltern Beirat.

Tell you what, BTC and gemini, find me the speeches she has made within her official capacity as Governor of Alaska, not ones she made talking about God while speaking as a private citizen to a group of people in a church, i.e., a forum where people are expected to talk about God .

!!!

How many times do I have to point out that the governor of a state making a speech in front of media IS NOT AND NEVER COULD BE making statements as a private citizen? How on earth do you not understand that?

In what capacity was she invited to speak- as the Governor of Alaska or as Sarah Palin (a former member of that very church)?

BTW, from a portion of the speech cited by gemini-


Sounds to me like she is giving to Ceasar what belongs to Ceasar and to God what belongs to God.

Dude, you seem pretty level-headed and clearly well-informed.

That said, does your amateur political organizer status mean you got the blast email 20 minutes before it went up on the text of this thing was posted on a whole bunch of websites last evening with instructions to be forwarded like a chain letter to as many press outlets as possible?

You made it sound like this thing had been emailed to you personally, and you were coy about revealing the source. I googled up the source in about 18 miliseconds. Now 18 hours later, you're acting as if it's gotten to the press "sooner or later."


If you're trying to gain streed cred as a wired-in politico, then that's cool. However, I think we deserve some clarification ... because otherwise you look like you completely spaced on yesterday's posts. And if you don't respond at all, then it will also confim that you have me blocked and that'll have answered the question.

Especially as she was discussing GOVERNMENTAL POLICIES, not her thoughts on Mark or Luke.

This thing completely stinks. A "concerned citizen" who come out of the woodwork and just happens to write up a completely unsourced piece which basically picks apart Palin's entire life from A to Z. Gimme a break. If someone came up with something like that on Obama, I would find it just as ridiculous.

thank you.

I have no idea and it doesn't matter. If she wanted it to be a private matter, she should have delivered the speech in closed camera with the media excluded. Every politician knows that.

Why the hell does any of this matter to you in the first place?

FYI: From the email headers, the author sent it to someone whom I know that forwarded it to me. So what is your point?

It matters because source is very important, especially when a politician is getting slammed. It's all over the internet now, and I'm sure her email address will be, too.

The point is that 10 minutes ago you made it sound like an "aha" moment that a piece of inside information you had had finally leaked to the press, when in reality it was all over the internet including an identified source within seconds of your original post on it last night ... with no comments from your side whatsoever that made it look like you were ducking the discussion.

You clearly don't have me blocked, so that answers one part of the question. The second part is making sure you're an objective source and not on the DNC payroll.

I told you to google it yourselves.

Shoot them wolves and bears Sarah!

They are really stupid those wolves - it would better if they pretended to be hit and dead with the first missed shot and then when the hunters land and wander over then jump at their throats.

Eurovol do you have any video of the men, women and children getting blown to bits by the USAF while they are sitting in their homes in Afghanistan.

That is THE most cowardly form of hunting there is. If she really supports that... well, maybe we should start the sport of hunting politicians.

For those not convinced Fox news is rabidly and blindly biased beyond all sense...

I got my elephant gun!

I agree BtC. The threat comes from extremism whether that extremism comes from atheists or from Christians. Quite honestly, Conquistador is making it sound as though Christians are still being thrown to the lions, and that they all have to band together to survive the great evil threat of ...? Who really cares what anyone believes in? Whether they are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, whatever I have forgotten. What should be practised is tolerance guys - I thought that was part of the Christian creed. There certainly isn't much of it being aired from certain TT posters here. It sounds like a "them and us good guys" line.


You are further up north Expaticus. Down here in deepest Bavaria, the church is a solid part of most people's lives. (An irrelevance: Did you know that you are not allowed to hang up washing in public view on a Sunday? Now that is rubbish.)


No hysteria Conquistador. The lady herself has pinned her colours to the wall and has publicly declared her religious beliefs as influencing her political intent. That should not be the case, as it should not be in the Middle East, in Ireland,and all other places where believing in one religion makes you a target for someone else who believes in in another faith. Belief should be separate from politics - forcing your version of what you believe on others is basically saying that you believe that you are the smartest, most perfect being ever created, and that everybody should accept your interpretation of your faith, because you know that it is correct. What is that saying, He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool; avoid him. Too right, he/she is downright dangerous. Nobody knows everything - but I certainly have the strong feeling that this lady thinks that she does.

Would someone please tell me what AFAIK means??!!

(As Far As I Know)

As Far As I Know it means As far As I Know.

All fuck ass if I know.

I supported that org (Defenders) when I was back in the States, along with many other enviro orgs. And I actually believe in the right to bear arms. But that is NOT hunting... that is pure cowardice. Ok, now I really REALLY hate this woman! Maybe she will do us all a favor and get attacked by a grizzly while she is out for a jog... GRRRRR!!!

Ah illumination

I support the right to keep and arm bears!

All is fair in the pastor game!



Sarah Palin's Pastor Problem 2

And that's your reason for calling europeans hypocrites? Hello? They're not even christian and they can observe a day of rest. That's right, God had a day of rest, but Christians (Republican-minded variant) somehow ignore that, but can't allow same sex unions, something that was not addressed anywhere in the bible. they only talk about 2 dudes bumming each other and how that's a sin. If anyone's the hypocrite with this issue, it's definitely the US.

Yes. If they were truly enlightened athiests, they would have deemed all these christian religious holidays as vestigal and moved them to more sensible times of the year instead of following a holiday schedule set by biblical interpertation.

Same-sex marriage is available in two US states and three european countries. I didn't do the math, but I'll bet the population of the former is greater than the latter.

I'm all for same-sex marriages personally, as it does not offend my own moral values whatsoever. But I fully understand those who oppose it on economic grounds: If it is the government's job to think of the future, they should be in the business of promoting things like home ownership and childbearing, and discouraging renting and non-procreation.

Where does it stop? In my first job out of school, I had a roomate. Money was tight for both of us. Had we had the chance, we probably would have considered getting a legal marriage, filing taxes as "married filing jointly", putting each other on the better side's health insurance and cancelling the other, etc. etc. Then we'd just get divorced later. But I would have felt terrible knowing that this was likely to negatively impact some family trying to raise the very kids who'll inevitably pay us our pensions.

bullshit. read further back in this thread. she was talking about the mission in iraq having something to do with God's will.

As for religious people being dangerous / scary to be in office, of course they're different than say atheists. Atheists don't use God as a reason to do something. And if God's will is so easy to know and understand, if God's work speaks so true, then why are there so many denominations of Christianity?? SECRET: It's because they don't know what God's will is.

If you look at the history and examine the traditions of most so called Christian holidays you will find that most date back to pre-Christian times or were co-opted by the church.

Back to my argument before ... if it's not unambiguously Christian than it's okay. If it is, it's rubbish.

Actually no, because there is no atheist bible for atheists to quote, interpret, misinterpret, then derive an unwritten "how to live" rulebook from, like christians do. So your argumentation is not reciprocal in the way it applies to christians picking and choosing their politics based on somewhat arbitrary values that have *gasp* evolved over time.

atheists allowing christian holidays for all citizens, my god, what a terrible policy. if i were an atheist i'd be furious that I have a holiday.

Actually, this is an interesting point.

Only problem is that history's self-proclaimed athiest leaders are only those who were so megalomaniacal that they saw their people's belief in God standing in their way!

Historically, some religious people were scary, and some religious leaders were scary, and all religious leaders were a subset of religious people, the overwhelming majority of whom were not scary. So it would not necessarily follow that all religious leaders are scary.

However, even though only some athiest people were scary, all athiest leaders were scary. Therefore, one should logically be more concerned if an aethiest says she wants to be your leader than if a bible-thumper does. Sad but true.

Unless the aethiest population has boomed ... but it hasn't.

I highly doubt the rise in marriage fraud as a result, and it's not as easy or cheap to get divorced as you'd think. That, I don't think, is not a reason to be against same sex unions, or if it is, you're saying the reason it's not good is because of potential fraud?

So... who's the atheist in the election race? AFAIK, nobody.

Post 3474 provides the argumentation over why I would take a moderate over an extremist (sorry, fundamentalist) any day.

This election is about the country, not the individual. What kind of a country do you want to have? What do you want to be proud of?

I will reiterate, I think it's a drag that gay couples in long-term relationships have historically not been able to avail theselves to the major-league benefits enjoyed by heterosexual married couples. Tax filing status, estate disposition, even something as simple as signing a lease or visiting a loved one int he ICU after a car wreck. That's the primary reason I support it personally, because I don't think people should be held to different standards solely due to the way they're wired.

Non-procreating gays probably end up as breakeven societal propositions at best. They don't have kids to contribute to the future prosperity of the nation or even their own pay-as-you-go-scheme ertirement, but they also don't use schools and the myriad tax breaks that tax systems generally give young families such as child allowances, joint filing deductions, or even as France and Singapore do with explicit cash bonuses to have children. On the other hand, when they die they generally don't have a legal spouse who lingers around on social security that the dead partner paid into despite having never paid in themselves. Naturally, the same can be said for childless heterosexual couples, but prima facie the potential is there, which is admittedly isn't the case for same-sex couples for obvious biological reasons.

The economic rationale for this disparity has been there's a higher stastical probability that a stay-at-home mother who never paid into social security was actually doing unpaid work as a raiser of future tax/pension payers, so she's entitled to the survivorship benefits of legal marriage.

That's percisely why same-sex couples being legally allowed to adopt children is a whol 'nuther story in my view, because then same-sex marriages have the same longer-term status as contributors to the common wealth. And I think there's no accident that the two phenomena are on the rise simultaneously.

To the fraud point, I agree it's hard to do spoof marriages, but think of how many used to be done for Green Cards before they clamped down on it.

Alternatively, why bother changing the holidays just because of religious squatters?

Forgive me if I misread you, but you appeared to be arguing that an athiest would by definition make a better leader than someone with all sorts of creepy religious belief baggage.

I was pointing out that every single aethiest leader of the past 100 years was a despotic dictator who led their people on lemming-like quests for world conquest.

So there's no historical precedent in modern history that religious nuts are any more dangerous than aethiests .. in fact, quite the contrary!

A candidate field free of both religious nuts or avowed aethiests would be nice ... know any nice agnostics who want to run ?

To show 'em who's boss ... and spread out that weirdo German month of May where people are so busy cobbling together long weekends due to himmelfahrting, pfingstening, corpuschristy-ing or whatever else they're supposed to be doing that no work gets accomplished

LOL, I thought we'd get put through the *ringer* at our Green Card interview for my husband... they took one look at our baby, our home, incomes and basically said "welcome to CA."

You think it's bad here... try living in Spain.

Yeah, it would get Palin to Washington and give Alaskans a chance to elect a governor who can actually handle a crisis.

Gail Collins has a(nother) great column in the NYT today about the RNC speakers so far, as well as Palin's address. Collins touches on a theme that hasn't really been addressed by the Republican speakers yet:

I had a tougher time ... and then had to try really hard not to die during the immediate three years after we were married or my wife would have been on the hook to have paid 50% inheritance taxes on our family trust disposition.

N.b. the three-year rule (the legal test for a "bona fide" marriage to a foreign national) was put in place to keep billionaires from marrying 20-somethings from the Caymans on their deathbed and then having the whole pile move offshore without Uncle Same taking a 50% cut. Great rule from that perspective, but tough knowing that if you were hit by a bus your wife and kids might face a distressed tax sale or clipped insurance payouts.

P.S. "Wringer" has a "w".

FFS, the whole point is that both fanatical religious people and fanatical atheists are tiny minorities in Europe with the vast majority of our population either a bit religious or just plain agnostic. The holiday schedule actually has nothing to do with anything biblical anyway no matter what names are now applied to the holidays. Most corresponded to feast days of pagan religions as even the church realised that most people hang on to their traditions like billy-o even if they do not actualkly have a faith in anything.


actually it is four european countries if you count Norway. But even if you don't, the EU population would be 72,193,828 while the US would be 43,002,970. Not that it matters really. But while in the EU most of the rest have CPs or are seriously considering introducving similar legislation the same is not true of the majority of states in the USA.


eh? gay people procreate too and most of us are more likely to own our own homes as well.

Gay people could always get the home mortgage deduction, as can any single or married hetersexual person. I just meant that the US government's primary goal with tax breaks on home ownership and traditional marriage is a sufficient number of taxpayers to keep the current working generation from having to eat cat food ... a.k.a. children.

As I said in my prior post, the fact that things such as adoption, IVF, surrogates etc. have become increasingly not only legally but socially accepted has fundamentally changed the same-sex marriage debate ... which is why I believe the trend is inexorable.

Actually, this is one of the great philosophical questions of all time:

Are moral codes of nominally post-religious states (of which Europe is the largest living laboratory) simply running on the lingering fumes of the judeo-christian ethics which will eventually disappear entirely, or is there a morality "default setting" that we all have as humans that we'd just sort of happily go by without religion, organized or personal ... i.e. would secular humanism alone do the job? Would it really become okay to kill somebody if there were no moral relativism left? Think Clockwork Orange.

I personally think a lot more is biological than we think ("religious" taboos often have much deeper roots). But what lingers in the back of my mind is that the last time German was a living laboratory for a society where traditional religious belief slowly drained from the system, the resulting shift in morality had a very, very bad ending. But now it's one of the hotbeds of anti-religious sentiment.

I also think it's facinating that the common denominator for every replacement rate/growing element of mankind is religious belief ... which may render the whole argument moot in a generation or two as all of us non-God-botherers eventually die off!