Gawdzilla Sama
121.92-meter mutant fire-breathing lizard-thingy
It would have been extremely kind.
Dick Cheney thinks Obama is worst President of his lifetime
- Thread starter Tony Stark
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It would have been extremely kind.
Olowkow
Philosopher
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double, sorry
I'll take advantage of a mistaken double post to say that over the years I have noticed a pattern. Of course, present company excepted, but I have noted many really crazy politicians get elected, and for some reason they seem to mostly be republicans. We dems have our share of crooks, but not nearly the percentage of nutty ones that the other party seems to get. I wonder why that is. Do conservative republicans just not notice the nuttiness, or do they attempt to cover for the crazies? I honestly cannot tell.
I'll take advantage of a mistaken double post to say that over the years I have noticed a pattern. Of course, present company excepted, but I have noted many really crazy politicians get elected, and for some reason they seem to mostly be republicans. We dems have our share of crooks, but not nearly the percentage of nutty ones that the other party seems to get. I wonder why that is. Do conservative republicans just not notice the nuttiness, or do they attempt to cover for the crazies? I honestly cannot tell.
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Olowkow
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I'm not sure of your point here. Your term "liberal rage machine" is kind of meaningless to a liberal.
I'm not conversant in Fox-speak. I, along with many other democrats at the time, thought her convention speech was not that bad. I had no idea who she was, but was curious to find out. My first memory of her as woefully uninformed was the "in what respect Charlie" whiny and obviously clueless tone concerning the Bush Doctrine.Fuzzy memory, but I can still picture all of my liberal friends realizing that Obama actually had a chance to win, when I saw the Couric piece with "I read all of them". I also recall all the right wing pundits as Palin apologists, very frustrating at the time. Most of us libs actually value highly a functional republican party.
ETA: It just occurred to me that this "liberal rage machine" may have been a cherry picked version of liberal views presented to a Fox audience. I don't know this as fact, but that's the only thing that makes sense to me given my own memory.
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Spindrift
Time Person of the Year, 2006
No they wouldn't.
Spindrift
Time Person of the Year, 2006
It seems to me that spouting certain code words and phrases like "lower taxes", "family values", "secure the borders", "Obama bad", "entitlements", etc., obviates the need of the speaker from being rational.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
Is "family values" still a thing?
Is that anti-gay or anti-choice? I honestly can't remember.
Spindrift
Time Person of the Year, 2006
Oh yes. It's still a go to maxim for the right. There's an annual "Value Voters Summit", guess who won the straw poll there last year?
Belz...
Fiend God
No, it was clear that she was a total idiot right off the bat.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
At least, it was pretty darn early. I wouldn't say immediately. I know I took a few days/weeks to find out anything more substantive than her wikipedia page.
What was apparent from day one was that choosing her was McCain's rather transparent attempt to grab the disappointed Clinton supporters. That worked out well for them.
The stupid thing was that there were other female Republicans that would have done better at attracting women voters. My wife was hoping for Elizabeth Dole.
Olowkow
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Just in case anyone wonders whether this talk of the folly of Palin's selection for the vice-presidency is off topic, I don't think so. Her name was invoked here as an example of someone whom the best minds of the far right wing of the republican party deemed to be a viable and appropriate candidate for vice president. Few still do.
Those of us who recall Cheney from the Nixon era knew that it was a bad idea to have him back in a position of power in government, and many of us liberals slowly began to understand that it was he not Bush who was really calling the shots and posturing on foreign affairs. But once again, a wide swath of the best and the brightest conservative republicans continued to defend his actions as a force inside the White House. Few still do.
Are conservatives less capable of spotting problematic leaders than liberals? More gullible? Or do they just not care? Do conservatives expect less integrity from their politicians than liberals? I wonder. These are really just questions that relate to behavioral issues of two groups of American citizens.
And when there is republican outrage against Obama, are objections really always in the best interests of those who are objecting to a particular issue? Obamacare, for instance. Or have the close quarters of the information provided by institutions with a financial motive been detrimental to the ability of some conservatives to make independent judgements? AGW denial is a good example. I ask this because I now realize that there are people whose only source of information is Fox-News and who have never heard of Bill Maher or Rachel Maddow. Not a lot I imagine, but they do exist.
Those of us who recall Cheney from the Nixon era knew that it was a bad idea to have him back in a position of power in government, and many of us liberals slowly began to understand that it was he not Bush who was really calling the shots and posturing on foreign affairs. But once again, a wide swath of the best and the brightest conservative republicans continued to defend his actions as a force inside the White House. Few still do.
Are conservatives less capable of spotting problematic leaders than liberals? More gullible? Or do they just not care? Do conservatives expect less integrity from their politicians than liberals? I wonder. These are really just questions that relate to behavioral issues of two groups of American citizens.
And when there is republican outrage against Obama, are objections really always in the best interests of those who are objecting to a particular issue? Obamacare, for instance. Or have the close quarters of the information provided by institutions with a financial motive been detrimental to the ability of some conservatives to make independent judgements? AGW denial is a good example. I ask this because I now realize that there are people whose only source of information is Fox-News and who have never heard of Bill Maher or Rachel Maddow. Not a lot I imagine, but they do exist.
SezMe
post-pre-born
I gotta go with sunmater14 here. I think Cheney was a disaster for the country but it speaks ill of anyone who applauds or urges another's death.
sunmaster14
Penultimate Amazing
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Following up, here is a NY Times op-ed published on September 2, 2008, which basically claims that Palin is a disastrous and embarrassing VP pick because of, well, reasons I guess. It is only one article, but it is representative of the frenzy at the time. Palin had been painted as an extremist, white trash, loon, even before she stepped onto the stage at the Republican convention. She wasn't specifically identified as an inarticulate know-nothing, but she was definitely portrayed as scarily unqualified to be a VP nominee.
By the way, here is a link to the thread where we hashed out some of this Palin stuff before. It's interesting reading in retrospect.
ETA: Here's a NY Times article published on September 6, 2008, which examines her religion more deeply than the NY Times ever had done with respect to Obama.
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Spindrift
Time Person of the Year, 2006
Reasons?
Frenzy at the time? You mean when someone is selected as a Vice Presidential nominee? Especially someone who was pretty much an unknown? Of course there's a frenzy. To expect anything less was just self-delusion on the part of the McCain campaign. They threw the chum in the water and acted surprised when the sharks showed up. And it illustrates what a botch-up it was to pick Palin. Palin main asset to the McCain campaign was that she had breasts and they thought they were courting Hillary supporters. They should have gone with someone whose main asset was about a foot further up.
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Red Baron Farms
Philosopher
Depends on the context. Cheney was in favor of and linked to war crimes, seeing as how torturing prisoners is a war crime. If a court sentenced him to death, I wouldn't protest. Didn't they execute Saddam for much of the same reasons? But the winner of a war never executes its own war criminals. So it will never even go to trial. They already found a few scapegoats for the torture incidents. They didn't get death either. Doesn't mean I would protest if they did. Torturing prisoners is a very serious offense to humanity. The excuses for it are certainly far from meeting the bar required for justification.
Upchurch
Papa Funkosophy
The frenzy for which you can find only one, rather tepid op-ed that addresses actual things she had done and does none of these:
So far, it was true based on information available at the time.
One of those links was from an article more than two years after she had been selected by McCain. Everything else in that link took place two weeks after her selection.
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/the-wright-controversy/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/politics/02obama.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/us/05beliefs.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/us/politics/13campaign.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/01/us/politics/01evangelicals.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/01/us/politics/01religion.html
eta:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/opinion/30wed1.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/us/politics/29text-obama.html?pagewanted=all
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Lying to start a war is pretty much the status quo for human history. It's not right, but just for perspective, it's worth noting.
Jrrarglblarg
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Crapping your pants is considered status quo for babies, but as humans mature we expect them to mature past it.
Gawdzilla Sama
121.92-meter mutant fire-breathing lizard-thingy
I loved his use of crayon and paper bag.
sunmaster14
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It was a NY Times Op-Ed comparing her to the most embarrassing VP pick in living memory, based on the fact that she had some loose connection with the Senator from Alaska (the governor of Alaska knows the Senator from Alaska - who would have thunk?) who had been indicted (and later completely vindicated - posthumously unfortunately), that she had initially supported pork barrel spending in her state before eventually deciding it was a waste of money, that she had appointed an officer who had been reprimanded once for sexual harassment, and that her daughter got knocked up. How ridiculous are those reasons?
Obviously, you didn't read the article past the first sentence, or you would have realized that it was contemporaneous with her nomination - September 2, 2008 to be precise - despite the fact that the date stamp above the article is wrong.
Your failure to find any NY Times articles which dig into Obama's religion to anywhere near the degree that the article I cited dug into Palin's goes to prove my point. The only articles which dig into Obama's religion (and many of them are simply articles about the politics of religious related gaffes or outreach to religious voters) are for the purpose of defending him against the Reverend Wright controversy - a controversy that the NY Times did its best to ignore for as long as possible.