Inspire Political Discourse

Sarah Palin Mock’s Obama’s “Vast Nuclear Experience”

On Wednesday, Sarah Palin offered her unique view of Obama’s new nuclear policy.

This morning, Obama responded to the Wasilla hillbilly when asked to do so by George Stephanopoulos on GMA.

A short time ago while perusing the blogs, I learned that Palin had once again managed to stick her foot squarely in her mouth when she did her tap dance at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans today. Via TPM, bolding mine, she had this to say:

“Now the president, with all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer, and a part-time senator and as a full-time candidate, all that experience, still no accomplishment to date with North Korea and Iran.

Ms. Palin was clearly blissfully unaware that contrary to her uninformed, narrow view, the President did have the benefit of researching and authoring a bill while still a U.S. senator. Via Bob Cesca:

Lugar-Obama Signed into Law Thursday, January 11, 2007 President Bush today signed the Lugar-Obama proliferation and threat reduction initiative into law.
Authored by U.S. Sens. Dick Lugar (R-IN) and Barack Obama (D-IL), the Lugar-Obama initiative expands U.S. cooperation to destroy conventional weapons. It also expands the State Department’s ability to detect and interdict weapons and materials of mass destruction.

As Mr. Cesca pointed out, weapons and materials of mass destruction are, lo and behold, WMDs or loose nukes.

So, yes Sarah, the President is once again vastly superior to you in his knowledge of this topic.

That is all.

---

PROFILES: Obama's No. 1 Science Guy, Dr. John Holdren

In his weekly radio address, Obama announced the four members of his science team. His choices indicated to the world that America is about to get serious re global warming, and that the Bush era of sneering at scientific fact, and substituting religious dogma for scientific fact, is finally over.

Dr. John Holdren will be Obama's no. 1 science adviser, and as the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, as well as a co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology aka PCAST, he will manage a group of approximately 40 doctorate-level experts who will assist Obama in shaping and communicating science and technology policy.

His work has focused on global environmental change, energy technologies and policies, nuclear proliferation, and science and technology policy. As one of the foremost experts on climate change  in the country, Holdren has been a strong advocate for forceful government action. In a speech at Harvard a year ago, Holdren said that “Global warming is a misnomer. It implies something gradual, something uniform, something quite possibly benign, and what we're experiencing is none of those.There is already widespread harm ... occurring from climate change. This is not just a problem for our children and our grandchildren.” 

EDUCATION:
» Bachelor's degree from MIT in 1965
» PhD from Stanford University in 1975

POSITIONS HELD
» President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
» Chairman of the board of directors of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
» Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
» Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
» Professor at the University of California, Berkeley for 20+ years.
» Director of the Woods Hole Research Center.
» Chair of the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
» Chair of the advisory board for Innovations: Technology | Governance | Globalization, a quarterly journal about entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges published by MIT Press.

AWARDS

» MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship, 1981
» Volvo Environment Prize of 1993 (with Paul Ehrlich)
» Kaul Foundation Award in Science and Environmental Policy, 1999
» Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, 2000
» 7th Heinz Award in Public Policy, 2001

Give Sarah Palin the Boot

►Sarah Palin Engendering Racial Hatred, Encouraging the Insanity on the Campaign Trail. She needs to go. Now.

Sarah Palin's recent attacks on Obama are without any real basis in fact, and Palin's supporters demean her, as Palin demeans all Americans. Encouraging, rather than condemning her supporters who yell horrific things such as " kill him" , "he is a traitor", "treason", "terrorist", and other things of that nature in reference to the Democratic nominee for President of the United States, Barack Obama, is beyond stupid, beyond politics, and bordering on insanity. Palin herself calls him "the best friend of a terrorist", a claim totally without basis in fact, and the Republican party has already acknowledged this. This woman needs to go. Quickly. Away.

Palin needs to recuse herself from this election and allow McCain to select another running mate, hopefully someone with intelligence,

Continue reading here.

Palin Derides Taxpayers

►Palin’s Kind of Patriotism - The New York Times

Criticizing Sarah Palin is truly shooting fish in a barrel. But given the huge attention she is getting, you can’t just ignore what she has to say. And there was one thing she said in the debate with Joe Biden that really sticks in my craw. It was when she turned to Biden and declared: “You said recently that higher taxes or asking for higher taxes or paying higher taxes is patriotic. In the middle class of America, which is where Todd and I have been all of our lives, that’s not patriotic.”

What an awful statement. Palin defended the government’s $700 billion rescue plan. She defended the surge in Iraq, where her own son is now serving. She defended sending more troops to Afghanistan. And yet, at the same time, she declared that Americans who pay their fair share of taxes to support all those government-led endeavors should not be considered patriotic.

Pre-Debate Spin - Palin's IQ Doesn't Matter

►McCain Camp's Pre-Debate Spin: Palin Doesn't Need To Pass IQ Test - The Huffington Post

Listening to surrogates and aides to John McCain on Thursday, one is left with the impression that there is no great need for Gov. Sarah Palin to actually answer questions during tonight's vice presidential debate.

Indeed, the spin coming from McCain surrogates and strategists is that all Palin has to do is pass a sort of artificial personality test, in which she strikes an emotional thread with the average voter -- question, answers, or intellectual capacity be damned.

Such were the talking points mere hours before the debate in St. Louis, which peaked with Sen. Joe Lieberman - a man not unaccustomed to the pressures of such a forum - actually proclaiming that Palin's relative ignorance helped her relate to "regular people."  Continue reading here.

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Conservative, Kathleen Parker, Continues to Slam Palin

►The Palin Problem - The Washington Post

That was the headline on my latest column, in which I suggested Sarah Palin bow out.

Well.

Several thousand e-mails later, I can say with some certainty that I hit a nerve.

To the GOP base, predictably, I'm a traitor. But what's interesting is how many Republicans seem to take attacks on Palin personally. Moreover, they despise the media so much that they'd rather rationalize Palin's flaws than acknowledge what is patently obvious. In their view, it is the media's fault that Palin has been rendered incoherent.

I don't doubt that Palin is much more articulate on issues with which she is familiar. She is undoubtedly a political talent and a rising star. But she was plucked too soon. Both Palin and McCain are responsible for this unfortunate and untimely debacle -- he for asking her and she for accepting.

Obviously, the McCain team knows it has a problem or it wouldn't be shielding Palin from less-structured media encounters. They've brought in their big guns to coach her for Thursday's debate. Perhaps, they will succeed in raising her game. My guess is she'll do better than anyone expects, but that would require only that she speak in complete sentences with subject and verb in their proper order. Continue reading here.

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Palin Says Being Gay is a Choice

The Washington Post Opinion Writers:

"But as for homosexuality, I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions that they make in their adult personal relationships. I have one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years happens to be gay, and I love her dearly. And she is not my 'gay friend,' she is one of my best friends, who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I have made. But I am not going to judge people."

-- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric

Gov. Palin, a choice is between Coke or Pepsi, Cher or Celine, Yuengling or Budweiser, Jimmy Choos or Manolos. Not whether to be gay or straight.

No one would choose to put their careers on the line. "Of our over 5,000 Legal Help Desk calls in 2007, 78 percent (2,778) were sexual orientation discrimination," says Lisa Hardaway, media relations director of Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. "Of the sexual orientation discrimination issues, 26 percent (730) were workplace-related." According to the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, about 12,500 people who were serving their nation with honor have been drummed out of the military since 1994 because they were gay under the nonsensical "don't ask don't tell" policy. At least 59 of them were Arabic linguists who are sorely needed in the war on terror.

No one would choose to be part of a marginalized group whose members have to sue their way to basic rights so that their relationships and their families are respected. Rights, such as hospital visitation and inheritance, that heterosexual couples take for granted. Continue reading here.

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McCain Claims That Palin Gives Him Foreign Policy Advice

►McCain: I Turn To Palin For Foreign Policy Advice - Think Progress.org

In an interview this morning with NPR, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that he has often turned to Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK) for foreign policy advice:

NPR: Given what you’ve said Senator, is there an occasion where you could imagine turning to Governor Palin for advice in a foreign policy crisis.

MCCAIN: I’ve turned to her advice many times in the past, I can’t imagine turning to Senator Obama or Senator Biden because they’ve been wrong. They were wrong about Iraq, wrong about Russia –

NPR: But would you turn to Governor Palin?

MCCAIN: I certainly wouldn’t turn to them, and I’ve already turned to Governor Palin particularly on energy issues and I’ve appreciated her background and knowledge on that and many other issues.

According to the McCain campaign, Palin’s foreign policy experience that the senator is relying upon includes: 1) the fact that Alaska is near Russia, and 2) she allegedly “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America.” In the NPR interview, McCain talked .........Continue reading here.

Palin's History as Governor of Alaska

►As Governor, Palin Has Focused on Developing State’s Resources - The New York Times

ANCHORAGE — When Gov. Sarah Palin meets Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday in the vice-presidential debate, even her fellow Alaskans might hear for the first time some of her views on health care reform, education policy and other issues of state government.  Continue reading here.

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Another Call For Palin to Step Down

►Sarah Six-pack Needs To Put Country First by Stepping Down - The Huffington Post

In the freakishly hamfisted world of Sarah Palin, Mike Judge's neighbor is qualified to be vice president of the United States.

Yesterday, Palin said the following to talk radio wingnut Hugh Hewitt:

"Oh, I think they're just not used to someone coming in from the outside saying you know what? It's time that a normal Joe Six-pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that's kind of taken some people off guard, and they're out of sorts, and they're ticked off about it."

There's so much awfulness in this quote, it's difficult to know where to begin. Out of sorts? Ticked off? Oh you betcha.

For the last eight dark years we've had a president who continues to be framed as a Joe Six-pack type. And it's been a disaster. No-one, at this point, is disputing the toxicity of the Bush presidency.

Here's the difference, though, between President Bush's Joe Six-pack persona and Sarah Palin's. For better or worse, George Bush -- and I can't believe I'm writing this -- had attained a respectable level of schooling while also coming from a family deeply rooted in American politics. In other words, be it the fake Crawford "ranch" and his cowboy drag, George W. Bush is mostly pretending. He's "Joe Six-pack" insofar as he's running away from his silver-spooned, cheerleading, Skull & Bones background. That doesn't mean he's any less ignorant. He's still a disconnected, incompetent nothing. But at least he possesses something resembling the heft required of the office. And it's worth noting for the sake of context that he initially ran for president as the "guy you want to have a beer with" in 1999 and 2000 -- a time of relative peace and prosperity. Bored Americans figured, Whatever. Might as well.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, is, by all indications, a bonafide hooplehead -- so dangerously out of her depth and so delusional -- perhaps blinded by ambition -- that she is in total denial about the real-world ..........Continue reading here.

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McCain's Medical Records

►New Urgency Over McCain Medical Questions As Election Nears - Huffington Post

Over the last few weeks, the issues of John McCain's age and health have been pushed, with much resistance, back into the heart of the political discussion. Prompted in part by the selection of Sarah Palin as the Republican vice presidential candidate, the topic crested with the release of a political advertisement calling attention to McCain's history of skin cancer and the need for more information about his medical records.

Cable news stations were too skittish to run the spot, produced by Brave New Films. CNN refused to air it, Fox's Bill O'Reilly called it shameful, and MSNBC, which initially aired the ad, reversed course and took it off the air.

All of which has come to the anger and befuddlement of Democrats as well as members of the medical community, both of whom ask a very basic question: what more important information is needed to elect a president other than his fitness for office?  Continue reading here.

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Palin vs Quayle - No Contest

►Has Palin Out-Qualyed Quayle? - Outside the Beltway

Dan Qualye was, rather unfairly in my view, a national joke.  From very shortly after George H.W. Bush picked a rising star senator from Indiana that few outside his home state had ever heard of to be his vice presidential running mate in 1988, Quayle became the butt of late night comics, “Saturday Night Live,” and other culture-setting institutions and became generally thought of as a not-ready-for-prime-time nincompoop.  People are still recycling the “you’re no Jack Kennedy” zinger that Lloyd Bentsen uncorked in the debates and the man’s supposed inability to spell potato is infamous if untrue.

But here’s the thing:  It really didn’t matter.    Bush-Quayle won in a landslide over Dukakis-Bentsen and, while they lost to Clinton-Gore in 1992, it had nothing to do with Quayle. Continue reading here.

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Palin Endorses Hamas

►Sarah Palin Endorses Hamas - The Alantic.com

29 Sep 2008 10:43 am

How can it be that some people still pretend that Sarah Palin is suited for high office? This country has never seen someone so comprehensively unprepared for the vice presidency; Dan Quayle was Metternich by comparison. I've watched Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric three times, and my astonishment does not diminish. Her nonsensical answer about Russia has deservedly been highlighted, but let me focus on another question, this one concerning the export of democracy. Couric asked, "What happens if the goal of democracy doesn't produce the desired outcome? In Gaza, the U.S. pushed hard for elections and Hamas won."
Palin's answer, in full, was this: "Yeah, well especially in that region, though, we have to protect those who do seek democracy and support those who seek protections for the people who live there. What we're seeing in the last couple of days here in New York is a President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who would come on our soil and express such disdain for one of our closest allies and friends, Israel ... and we're hearing the evil that he speaks and if hearing him doesn't allow Americans to commit more solidly to protecting the friends and allies that we need, especially there in the Mideast, then nothing will."
The issue here is not that Palin didn't know the answer. There are many possible answers to this question, some of which are right and some of which are wrong. The issue here is that she didn't know the question. Because she was apparently ignorant of the subject, she endorsed Hamas' victory, and, in essence, called for the U.S. to "protect" Islamists who seek to use democratic elections to lever themselves into power. Continue reading here.

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Newsweek Calls for Palin to Step Down

►Palin Is Ready? Please. - Newsweek

McCain says that he always puts country first. In this important case, that is simply not true.

Will someone please put Sarah Palin out of her agony? Is it too much to ask that she come to realize that she wants, in that wonderful phrase in American politics, "to spend more time with her family"? Having stayed in purdah for weeks, she finally agreed to a third interview. CBS's Katie Couric questioned her in her trademark sympathetic style. It didn't help. When asked how living in the state closest to Russia gave her foreign-policy experience, Palin responded thus:

"It's very important when you consider even national-security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the United States of America. Where—where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to—to our state."  Continue reading here.

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>Kathleen Parker, a Conservative Republican, Calls for Palin to Step Down
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Kathleen Parker, a Conservative Republican, Calls for Palin to Step Down

►Palin Problem - National Review
She’s out of her league.
By Kathleen Parker

If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin.
To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman. Continue reading here.

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►Sarah Palin - McCain's Token?