ScottFromWyoming wrote:
Carve that on my tombstone, why don'tcha.

 lowelltr wrote: 
What a steaming pile that is! I'm not as good at dissecting turds as Lazy is so bear with me:

Obama's father was hardly a simple goat herder, but rather the holder of a Masters degree from Harvard who became a prominent, politically-connected economist when he returned to Kenya.

Yes, his father returned to Africa with degree in hand and (Shocker!) did not go back to herding goats. He initially got a scholarship that landed him in Hawaii, married Ann, had Barry Jr., then when the baby was 2, left/was kicked out and went to Harvard. Jr. saw his father only once after that. It's not a terribly romantic story but it's not wrong to say his father was a goat herder from Kenya because that's what he was when he met Ann.

Obama's father, also named Barack, grew up herding goats and going to tin-roof schools, but he won a college scholarship in Hawaii. There, he married Obama's mother. The two soon separated, however, and Obama's father eventually returned to Kenya and worked as a government economist. Link

Ah, nevermind. He's from a scary-smart family who all have done quite well, even the deadbeat (now dead) dad. He's never known poverty but is a generation removed from it. If there's anything there you think is a Bad Thing, please point it out.

This is one of the most interesting debates... for many reasons.

I'm really digging what I read here.

Q:  What do Obama and Osama have in common?
A: They both know someone who bombed the Pentagon

......While Biden makes false claims of working class roots, Obama tells similarly misleading tales of his own background of purported hardship and poverty. He describes his father as "a goat-herder from Kenya" and his mother as "a struggling single mom who had to take food stamps to feed the family." He talks of being raised by his simple, Midwestern grandparents, and identifies them as "a grandmother who worked in a defense plant during the war while her husband marched with Patton's army in Europe."

This description has been repeated so often and so lovingly by Obama's acolytes that no one seems willing to point its blatant distortions. Obama's father was hardly a simple goat herder, but rather the holder of a Masters degree from Harvard who became a prominent, politically-connected economist when he returned to Kenya. His struggling single mom also held advanced degrees - including a Masteers and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Hawaii. Her periods of financial hardship related to her pursuit of graduate studies and her many years of field work in "rural development" in remote sections of Indonesia.

Moreover, even Obama's endlessly repeated description of his parents as "a father from Kenya and a mother from Kansas" is less than accurate. While indeed born in Wichita, his mother and her parents left Kansas at the end of World War II (before her sixth birthday) and she grew up in Texas, California and, most significantly, on Mercer Island, Washington-a stylish and woodsy suburb of Seattle. Obama's mother was an academic star and ardent student leftist (who used to hang-out in a hallway designated as "Anarchist's Alley) at Mercer Island High School, then - as now - admired as the top public high school in the state of Washington.

Meanwhile, Obama talks of his grandparents' activities during four years of World War II, but seldom mentions in speeches their professional achievements during and after the time of his birth in 1961. His grandfather, Stanley Dunham, worked as manager of a furniture store while his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, enjoyed conspicuous success as a banker. After studying at two of the finest state universities in the nation (University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Washington) his grandmother became vice president of a bank on Mercer Island, and then held a similar position with the Bank of Hawaii (where she worked for 26 years) after the family's move to Honolulu. In writing about Obama's grandmother, USA Today said "she blazed a feminist trail in Hawaii banking circles in the late 1960's and early 1970's and rose to become one of the Bank of Hawaii's first female vice presidents....'Was she ambitious? She had to be to become a vice president,' said Clifford Y.J. Kong, 82, who was a senior credit officer at the bank at the time. 'She was a top notch executive to get appointed.'"

Oddly, Senator Obama loves to cite his grandmother's brief experience as "Rosie the Riveter" in a defense plant during the war but never publicly discusses her three decades as a banking executive in Washington state and Hawaii. Her prominence and success certainly help to explain his admission to the exclusive Punahou School - by far the most prestigious (and expensive) private academy in the islands.

Like Biden, Obama has no basis whatever for describing his family background as impoverished or even "working class" - his parents were both high-achieving intellectuals, and the grandparents who raised him were successful business people. Not all bankers count as fabulously wealthy but no one could describe a prominent banking executive like his grandmother as downtrodden or disadvantaged.

Since the New Deal, Democrats have developed the annoying habit of demonizing business people and glamorizing the working class: a stupid prejudice that's produced glaring misrepresentations about the origins of both their national candidates and a stubborn refusal to acknowledge who these senators really are.

Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host, is author of 10 non-fiction books, including The Shadow Presidents and Right Turns.

The Obama camp is constantly chanting their mantra about how McCain is "out of touch" with the average American.  But then yesterday's news had this delicious tidbit:

Obama raises $9 million at Streisand benefit

Nine million dollars in one evening.  Are these guys kidding?  And they wonder why Obama's already flaccid poll ratings are sinking even further?  For heaven's sake, is any place more out of touch with the average American than Hollywood?  This is the world where a talentless dimwit can take home an eight-figure salary for 110 minutes of poorly-spoken dialogue in a badly written movie.  A world where spouses and significant others are tossed aside like last season's reruns.  A world of conspicuous excess; of private planes, multimillion-dollar mansions, gold toilets, expensive cars, haute couture ballgowns, teams of  nannies, chefs, drivers, bodyguards, masseurs, agents, managers, personal trainers, nutritionists, and therapists-on-call.  A world where plastic surgery is a rite of passage.  (And there are a lot of passages.)  These folks take home from one awards ceremony goodies that are worth more than what Cindy McCain wears in an entire campaign season.  Oh yeah - they're just like the average Joe.

And they're such great role models in their personal lives, too.  For the past three weeks we've seen poor Bristol Palin - and her mother - get raked over the coals for an unplanned pregnancy.  Meanwhile Hollywood starlets have made illegitimacy a BFOQ to be on the "A list," and the media drools over them. (Want proof?  Go look at archives of People magazine over the past few years and see if you can find ten Hollywood stars - female or male - who have bothered to get married more than 9 months before having a child.  If at all.)  The divorce rate in America is about 50%.  What is it in Hollywood - 95%?

And in how many other industries is substance abuse, repeated failed attempts at rehab, and simultaneous embarrassing 24/7 reality TV coverage guaranteed to jumpstart a flagging career? 

This would all be tolerable, if weren't for the fact that Hollywood is also populated with a bunch of pompous blowhards who have - on average - a high school education, and yet who see fit to pontificate for the rest of us on such delicate matters as economics, agriculture, energy policy, international diplomacy, counter-terrorism strategy, regulations of financial markets, and the constitutionality of the War Powers Act.  (Ok, I am joking about that last one.)  The whole of their understanding of politics over the past eight years can be summed up in two words - "Bush lied" - and that's already an etymological drop of one-third from the three-word synopsis of the previous eight years - "It's just sex."

Obama should be skewered on this one, mercilessly and repeatedly.  Sarah Palin's speech during the Republican convention last month sounded the call when she referred to Obama's "Styrofoam columns" being taken back to their Hollywood movie set.  Every time Obama tries to denounce "big business," the McCain campaign needs to jab back about "big Hollywood."  McCain should create ads that replay the footage of Cindy in medical gear in underdeveloped nations, and of John with poor children in Vietnam.  And then show the red-carpet events where Hollywood fawns over Obama, while the ad voiceover says, "Barack Obama accuses middle America of being bitter, of clinging to religions and guns.  His supporters in Hollywood have the same condescending disregard for the American public.  They accuse John McCain of being ‘out of touch' with Americans.  And then they hold glitzy fundraisers where each ticket costs $28,000.  $28,000.  For a lot of Americans, that's a year's salary.  How many hungry children could have been fed with that?" And then the ad could show a picture of Obama's half brother George, living in a shack in Kenya, while the voiceover asks, "For that matter, how long could George Obama eat with proceeds of just one Streisand ticket?  Barack Obama: in touch with Hollywood, and out of touch with you."

Let's be clear: it's a free country, and those in Hollywood - like every other citizen of the United States - have every right to voice their opinions, to vote their conscience, and to spend their money as gloriously and decadently they see fit.  But they have no right to treat the rest of us like knuckle-dragging idiots because we don't worship at the Enlightened Holy Church of Them.  And they have no standing to take the moral high ground when they live like third-world dictators.  Hollywood folks may have lost the ability to distinguish between the fantasy worlds they create (and live in), and the real world.  But we haven't.

Laura Hirschfeld Hollis is a Clinical Professor of Business Administration at the University of Illinois.

 pdhski wrote: 
Excellent, thoughtful wrods.

pdhski wrote:

 pdhski wrote: 
Beautiful!  Wow you are really DEEP, hotski!  Lovin' this!

 rosedraws wrote: 
Ok. So how about one good reason....?

If you think any one of the above, you are suffering from serious soul debilitating delusion. And that's a fact, Jack....I mean Rose.

 hippiechick wrote: 
Ain't gonna happen. The Republican base loves her as do a lot of women voters.

I am sipping latte (elitist that I am) in Panera, abusing their free WIFI. There was a table of Sarah Palins across from me half an hour ago. They were having a lively discussion about Palin and how much they like her. Then they segued into a discussion aboot the program for Sunday School this weekend and about reinforcing for the kids the importance of Jesus in their lives. I am not making this up.

Palin's here for the next few weeks. She may not get elected but she's not dropping out.

 rosedraws wrote: 

 Hey, good stuff, Rose.

 Lazy8 wrote: 

 ...you did catch the thread title, right?
 
Of course. Truthiness. Well, here's looking at Truthiness....
 
zipper wrote:  

Adopting the role of being the constant apologist is so unbecoming for a bonafide Libertarian. Just sayin'

hippiechick wrote:
Here are some reasons I came up with in just a couple minutes.  And no sarcasm is intended in the list.  These are reasons I've heard stated by people who are Republicans.  I don't agree, even remotely, with any of these reasons, but they are viable reasons, if this is what you think.  And there are MANY many people who think this way.  And they are going to vote.

1) If you think the Repubs will keep taxes lower

2) If you think a strong military presence in the middle east keeps terrorism at bay

3) If you think aggression is a better international position than diplomacy

4) If you think torture deters terrorism

5) If you think abortion and/or gay marriage should be illegal

6) If you think evolution should be taught as a theory... and that other theories (ie, creationism) should be taught equally

7) If you think supporting and growing large megacompanies strengthens our economy

phineas wrote:
PoliticoDivaHotski?







VOTE FOR PIE!

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:...you did catch the thread title, right?

 owld_skipper wrote: 
Great line!

Anyone want to wager on when SP will drop out?

 EleventhMan wrote: 
That is why I don't think McCain is a "maverick". I think he is a political opportunist first and foremost. If he should win, watch Palin disappear into the shadows.

As Obama said yesterday:

"This is somebody who's been in Congress for 26 years, who put seven of the most powerful Washington lobbyists in charge of his campaign, and now he tells us that he's the one who's going to take on the old boys' network.

The old boys' network? In the McCain campaign, that's called a staff meeting."

 zipper wrote: 

Babe, do I have the T-shirt for you.....



Leave all that namby pamby stuff about warmth & human spirit to those liberal queers I say.

COLD is what we like. COLD is what we are. ICE COLD !