The Sarah Palin VP announcement

[Miyabi]

Ignore and avoid miyabi

???I did something wrong?

[Necroben]

Ignore and avoid miyabi

???I did something wrong?

I was wondering that myself.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

No, you didn't do anything wrong. You stated your political beliefs, considerably more gently than Skar and I generally do. Though they may be less conventional political beliefs, there was no hate speech or emotional outpouring. You did just fine.

Ignore the guy telling others to ignore you.

[SarahG]

Isn't that called Montana?   

No it wasn't. ha ha.  But Montana and Idaho were both on the list of possible states. 

It was some state back east.  I want to say Vermont but I'm not sure.  I can't seem to find the site.  maybe I'm just not looking close enough. ah ah.

What I meant was, Montana (stereotypically) is already full of libertarians / anarchists.  But yeah, Idaho and Vermont are pretty much that way too.

[Skar]

RE: the books Palin allegedly banned while Mayor: http://www.snopes.com/politics/palin/bannedbooks.asp

[Miyabi]

Status: False.

You said alleged already yes, but. . . ha ha.  They even say that it is false. ROFL.

[CthulhuKefka]

I love my country and want to see it move forward towards the kind of country that our Founding Fathers wanted. The last 8 years, complete with utter disregard to the Constitution, only add to the debate. If we our leaders cannot even follow the highest law in the land, and then when they are called out on it, claim "Executive Privilege", it makes me sick. But I'm getting off topic.


To lighten up the thread a bit, here's a funny and well done video of McCain getting "Barack-Rolled" at the RNC.

http://gawker.com/5046412/barack-roll-becomes-mccains-worst-nightmare

[GreenMonsta]

I wasnt trying to tell people to ignore miyabi and you didnt do anything wrong, I was attempting to get someone to bite and miyabi was the first to respond. Nothing personal

[CthulhuKefka]

In more Palin related news, when she was Mayor of Wasilla, the town charged rape victims for their own Rape Kits. Am I the only one who sees a problem with this? 

http://www.americablog.com/2008/09/wasilla-charged-rape-victims-for-their.html

[SarahG]

In more Palin related news, when she was Mayor of Wasilla, the town charged rape victims for their own Rape Kits. Am I the only one who sees a problem with this?

That's a major problem, I think - although it may have been more a decision of the police department than the mayor's office.

At first I wondered if the blog claim was even true, so I went to the source of the article:
http://www.frontiersman.com/articles/2000/05/23/news.txt

Turns out, it is true, although the blog conveniently left out a few important pieces of the article, such as these comments from Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon:
"In the past weve charged the cost of exams to the victims insurance company when possible."
"Ultimately it is the criminal who should bear the burden of the added costs"
"The forensic exam is just one part of the equation. Id like to see the courts make these people pay restitution for these things"

I think this does add a little clarity to the argument; interpreted generously, it seems the police department charged the victim's insurance company if she had health insurance that would cover it.  This made it possible to seek restitution for these costs from the rapist.  I'm no lawyer, but it could be that under Alaskan statutes police departments cannot seek such restitution for their investigative costs.  Thus, the motive could have been to make the criminal, not the taxpayers, pay for these exams.

As I said, though, I'm being generous, and cynically I believe that the main reason for the law was to cut costs, and I still think it's despicable to do so in this way.  Even if the insurance company covers the charges, they will probably count toward the victim's total covered services for the year, and thus it still hurts her.

[CthulhuKefka]

Looks like she's perfectly ready to be Vice President.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2008/09/9620_sarah_palin_secret_email.html

Seriously, didn't we go through this already with Bush/Cheney? How did they get off....oh yeah, "Executive Privilege." Give me a farking break. lol

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

In other news, while I don't like what that linked article describes, there's a media problem I'd like to rant about.

Look, I've gotten more liberal as I've gotten older. As a teen-early twenties, I voted Republican almost on instinct. As I've gotten older I look more at issues and try to look less at party (though this is very difficult, since any reference to any politician in the media includes their party), so in the recent past I've voted for Democrats because I thought they'd do a better job (though this is *not* a straight ticket issue, if I ever feel inclined to vote straight along party lines, I will take a good long look at what I'm doing before going through with it).

So though my inclinations have liberalized, there are things that really, really bother me about the Washington Post (a liberally inclined paper) in the last week.

1) I don't like W., but the Post has been running as their headline stories all this week are a series of articles derived from Woodward's new book. OK, Woodward is a professional reporter, to some this questions his impartiality, but to others this strengthens their perceptions of it. However, he has a reputation of breaking presidents' balls. And while his history with Whitewater means that people in the know would be inclined to leak to him I'd think, adding *potential* credibility to his book, he's also an EMPLOYEE of the Post. So spending an entire week reporting the info in the book as "news," at the headline of the front page smacks, at it's most innocent, as merchandising. Since it doesn't seem to me to be headline news, it smacks much more to me of politically motivated reporting.

2)Then there's the story yesterday about Pallin's spending habits while governor of Alaska. This was also front page, though it was subordinate to the one on Woodward's book. The problem is, it reports all this spending like it was scandalous and inappropriate... but as you turned the page you learn that, even as the article admits, this is acceptable practice, and is expected of governors of the largest geographical state in the US who have to travel so far. And it was to be with her family, and it was, as far as I can tell, all done while doing her job.

I'm not what you'd call in the Pallin camp. But this seems like very irresponsible reporting.

[CthulhuKefka]

I agree.

Most mainstream media is horribly on wither one side or the other. There are very few who actually are impartial and non partisan.

I think one of the problems is that most news agencies often misquote people (recently with Obama) and runs it as a headline item. And there are people that will still buy into it just because one newspaper reported it.

I very rarely rely on mainstream media for news, only because it serves no purpose.

[SarahG]

I very rarely rely on mainstream media for news, only because it serves no purpose.

OK, then where do you get your news?  What source do you consider completely unbiased and how exactly do you know you can trust it?

[CthulhuKefka]

Ah, I probably should have reworded that differently lol.

I meant to say I don't rely on one primary news source. If I find a headline that's intriguing to me, I'll look for it on at least three or four other news sites. After I get all the sides of the story, I'll go to other news site and read nothing but comments from people (admittedly all people have biases, but it just helps my thinking process) before I form my opinion.