By MARC McDONALD
What was your reaction to John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his VP pick? Curiosity? Indifference? Bafflement?
The more one learns about Palin, the more afraid we progressives ought to be.
After all, a quick scan of the lunatic fringe blogosphere reveals that the wingnuts adore Palin. And anything that these nutcases cherish should be something that the rest of us fear and dread. (Remember, these are the same people who also love torture, illegal wars, and Constitution-shredding).
Palin's selection on Friday was predictably greeted with raves by the lunatic right-wing fringe.
On Friday, Michelle Malkin was among the wingnut bloggers cheering Palin's selection. And Malkin is about as crazy as they come on the right-wing fringe these days. As Glenn Greenwald noted, Malkin once wrote a book "defending the ethnicity-based imprisonment of innocent American citizens in internment camps."
Of Palin, Malkin wrote, "Yes, I’m impressed. Very impressed." Malkin also linked to a YouTube video showing Palin firing a military rifle. (Apparently that alone gets these wingnuts excited these days---which is curious, as most of them are chickenhawks who have never served).
Meanwhile, the wingnuts who run RightWingNews.com took time out from their busy schedule of bashing Obama and claiming global warming is a "hoax," to cheer Palin's selection. As one writer there noted, "I watched Sarah Palin's roll-out today and it was real home run. She has a great family, a great resume, and for the first time in more than a year, the crowd at a John McCain event seemed genuinely excited."
Hugh Hewitt over at Townhall.com was similarly enthused, as he raved about Palin in a piece titled, "An Extraordinary Choice." Reading his piece, one might think Palin was nothing less than the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan.
It's all rather interesting: the vast majority of America had never heard of Palin before Friday (and I'd suspect most wingnuts had never heard of her either). But now, they're suddenly falling all over themselves to assure us that she's a solid pick and has the credentials to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.
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14 comments:
This is McSame is wooing the disgruntled women and the lunatic right wing faction.
The fact that Malkin is cheering the choice is the biggest red flag out there.
Seriously? Palin has been on the ticket one day, and before that you never heard of her. Yet in that brief period you have decided she is unfit as a candidate and as a person to hold office. This is typical of someone who is already so invested in the democrat party that he cannot have a shred of objectivity. You stoop to railing about someone coming out in support of Gov. Palin (someone who also never heard of her before yesterday) yet you support a racist who has proven ties with domestic terrorists, no foreign policy or executive experience and who is an Ivy League out-of-touch elitist.
The Obama campaign was in shambles before the desperate choice of Biden, the boring-white-guy-Washington-good-'ol-boy-insider. Now that it has been further rocked by McCain's brilliant choice of a connected, smart, tough, attractive woman with a remarkable story and resume, you can see the panic in Obama's eyes and posture. His ship is sinking and he knows everyone knows it.
Palin is the darling of the 2008 campaign because she is the woman every woman wants to be and the woman every man wants to be with. Barak is not a rock star. He is a one hit wonder. He is M.C. Hammer. Sarah Palin is Elvis. Skinny Elvis.
Hey, she does have PTA experience. I suppose that is the same as say, law school or an MBA or something like that. Think of it this way... If they win and McCain is somehow incapacitated we could look forward to a juice box in every pot! I caught a bit of the comedian Rush Limballs yesterday and he said, "Babies, Guns and Jesus! Hot Damn!" Crazy is as crazy does.
Can't wait for the caribou heads mounted in the white house!
This is from MoveOn.org:
1. Palin was elected Alaska's governor a little over a year and a half ago. Her previous office was mayor of Wasilla, a small town outside Anchorage. She has no foreign policy experience.
2. Palin is strongly anti-choice, opposing abortion even in the case of rape or incest.
3. She supported right-wing extremist Pat Buchanan for president in 2000.
4. Palin thinks creationism should be taught in public schools.
5. She's doesn't think humans are the cause of climate change.
6. She's solidly in line with John McCain's "Big Oil first" energy policy. She's pushed hard for more oil drilling and says renewables won't be ready for years. She also sued the Bush administration for listing polar bears as an endangered species—she was worried it would interfere with more oil drilling in Alaska.
How closely did John McCain vet this choice? He met Sarah Palin once at a meeting. They spoke a second time, last Sunday, when he called her about being vice-president. Then he offered her the position.
In response to the first anonymous poster, Obama is "an Ivy League out-of-touch elitist."
Really?
This is a guy who's from a modest background who was raised by a single Mom.
On the other hand, McCain and his wife are worth over $100 million. And McCain can't recall how many houses he owns.
And Obama is the elitist?
Someone forgot to tell the 75,000 ordinary folks who waited in line for hours to see Obama speak at Mile High Stadium (and then gave him a tremendous, rock-star-like reception).
It was quite a contrast to the snooze-a-thons that McCain's appearances always are. McCain couldn't fill a stadium if he gave away free pizza and beer.
Well now we find out Palin's 17 year old daughter is 5 months pregnant. That kind of puts some cracks in the super mom status now doesn't it. Where was she when her "innocent" teenager was grinding on her boyfriend? Reforming something? Polishing her star? This kind of hypocricy is typical of white christian families. While the parents are off riding snowmobiles and killing large mammals, the kids are out in the woods drinking and smoking pot and doing the wild thing. What a little slut. What an embarassment to her family. Yet the Palins play it off like it is just something normal in their family. What???
In response to the previous commenter, I find it rich that the GOP are indignantly claiming that Palin's daughter's pregnancy should be "off limits" for the media.
Who are they kidding?
They're the ones who took what once were private matters and dragged them into the public square and created the whole genre of "moral values" politics.
I hope all these hypocrites roast in the flames of Hell someday.
People in the know have come up with a well-planned theory regarding Ms. Palin as VP. It makes sense and shows that the republican machine is up and running smoothly.
McCain has no intention of having Sarah Palin as VP. In a few weeks, not more than a month, she will announce that the demands of campaigning and of actually being the VP if elected, will be too much for a woman who has a downs syndrome baby and a pregnant daughter. She will drop out and Romney will take her place.
Compared to Palin, Romney is a god and even all the conservatives who don't like him because of gay marriage in Massachusetts will be ecstatic. And, just like the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake, Romney will be stepping in to save the day. Republicans get credit for having a woman on the ticket and trying to help break that glass ceiling. McCain will jump 20 points in the polls.
Ms. Palin will get the post of Secretary of the Interior for her trouble, which then opens the door for Alaskan wilderness drilling.
Yep, as you read this, McCain and Romney and Karl Rove are sitting in a room watching the press go nuts over Palin and saying to each other, "How stupid do they think we are?"
I agree with Marc. I think it is fitting that this little teenage whore is going to be sporting a giant scarlet letter for the whole world to see. She will be the "whipping boy" the Republican machine deserves. Fuck christians! (literally and figuratively.) I guess they all figure it was God's will for this little girl to be sprouting a baby. Don't for a second think the Palins did not give serious consideration to making this problem "go away." I guarantee you that if Palin had know for sure she was going to be tapped by McCain, that is one fetus that would have been flushed. Now that she is so far along she can do nothing but damage control. She is about to learn the meaning of what Obama meant about her daughter being "punished with a child." Wouldn't it have been better to simply stop this pregnancy? Think of the baby. It will be humiliated for its entire life, and the mother will too. It would have been better to stop it early on and give the little wench a chance to grow up before spawning a new Republican right wing offspring. These white christians really piss me off. They think they are soooooo perfect. But once you look under the surface, you see nothing but filthy reprobates. But Sarah Palin never loses her confidence or her fake smile. Why would she? If she spins this the right way, she might get to be the leader fo the free world. Isn't that better than maintaing the reputations of her next two generations? It has always been about her...don't you forget it. What a huge, stinking, fake cunt she is!
Man, this chick is sure getting an incredible amount of buzz for someone who was an unknown 2 weeks ago.
Do please visit
www.sarahpalinisajoke.com
I'm just calling it what it is
So the left are the voice of reason and decency, eh? Well, you’d have a heard time convincing me of that with comments like these. Do I think Sarah Palin is the ideal choice as VP? Of course not, but she has shown a bright light on the hypocrisy of the left. While both she and Obama have minimal experience, before the Palin pick it wasn’t experience that mattered, it was character. Now while those on the left are not likely to agree with what she stands for, you can’t deny that she has character. And all of the sudden, experience DOES matter – at least Palin’s experience.
As for the comments of Anonymous, including “I think it is fitting that this little teenage whore is going to be sporting a giant scarlet letter for the whole world to see”, if this is the mindset of the left – or even the type of comments tolerated by the left, then thank God I am a conservative. This is the same person who stated “Don't for a second think the Palins did not give serious consideration to making this problem "go away." I guarantee you that if Palin had know for sure she was going to be tapped by McCain, that is one fetus that would have been flushed” Why are we tapping Obama or McCain for President? With the ability to read minds and know what is in peoples hearts, wouldn’t “Anonymous” make a better Commander in Chief? And as for Mrs. Palin’s daughter’s soon-to-be-born child’s “lifetime of embarrassment”, I would guess that that is a punishment being reserved for the children of Anonymous.
As for the brilliant “Theory” by Carol J. that Palin will drop out within a month, making room for Romney after revitalizing the right wing of the party, all I can say is the tin foil on Carol’s hat might be a little tight. The scariest part of Carol’s rant was her claim that this theory “makes sense”. Again, if this is the best the left has to offer……
Carol, I’ll make you an offer: If your theory does come to pass, I will cast my vote for Obama, BUT if Palin is still the VP on election day, you vote for McCain.
I shall not hold my breath waiting for your response.
The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind
By Sharon Churcher
Last updated at 1:45 AM on 08th June 2008
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Now that Hillary Clinton has at last formally withdrawn from the race for the White House, the eyes of America and the world will focus on Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain.
While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the American dream – a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country’s future – McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the United States, but a crusade to rescue the nation’s tarnished reputation.
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Forgotten woman: But despite all her problems Carol McCain says she still adores he ex-husband
McCain likes to illustrate his moral fibre by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children.
But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.
And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain’s first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.
She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news.
But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.
When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons
had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.
Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.
Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.
For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.
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Golden couple: John and Cindy McCain at a charity gala in Los Angeles
Carol insists she remains on good terms with her ex-husband, who agreed as part of their divorce settlement to pay her medical costs for life. ‘I have no bitterness,’
she says. ‘My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce.
‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.’
Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.
McCain was then earning little more than £25,000 a year as a naval officer, while his new father-in-law, Jim Hensley, was a multi-millionaire who had impeccable political connections.
He first met Carol in the Fifties while he was at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis. He was a privileged, but rebellious scion of one of America’s most distinguished military dynasties – his father and grandfather were both admirals.
But setting out to have a good time, the young McCain hung out with a group of young officers who called themselves the ‘Bad Bunch’.
His primary interest was women and his conquests ranged from a knife-wielding floozy nicknamed ‘Marie, the Flame of Florida’ to a tobacco heiress.
Carol fell into his fast-living world by accident. She escaped a poor upbringing in Philadelphia to become a successful model, married an Annapolis classmate of McCain’s and had two children – Douglas and Andrew – before renewing what one acquaintance calls ‘an old flirtation’ with McCain.
It seems clear she was bowled over by McCain’s attention at a time when he was becoming bored with his playboy lifestyle.
‘He was 28 and ready to settle down and he loved Carol’s children,’ recalled another Annapolis graduate, Robert Timberg, who wrote The Nightingale’s Song, a bestselling biography of McCain and four other graduates of the academy.
The couple married and McCain adopted Carol’s sons. Their daughter, Sidney, was born a year later, but domesticity was clearly beginning
to bore McCain – the couple were regarded as ‘fixtures on the party circuit’ before McCain requested combat duty in Vietnam at the end of 1966.
He was assigned as a bomber pilot on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin.
What follows is the stuff of the McCain legend. He was shot down over Hanoi in October 1967 on his 23rd mission over North Vietnam and was badly beaten by an angry mob when he was pulled, half-drowned from a lake.
War hero: McCain with Carol as he arrives back in the US in 1973 after his five years as a PoW in North Vietnam
Over the next five-and-a-half years in the notorious Hoa Loa Prison he was regularly tortured and mistreated.
It was in 1969 that Carol went to spend the Christmas holiday – her third without McCain – at her parents’ home. After dinner, she left to drop off some presents at a friend’s house.
It wasn’t until some hours later that she was discovered, alone and in terrible pain, next to the wreckage of her car. She had been hurled through the windscreen.
After her first series of life-saving operations, Carol was told she may never walk again, but when doctors said they would try to get word to McCain about her injuries, she refused, insisting: ‘He’s got enough problems, I don’t want to tell him.’
H. Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, future presidential candidate and advocate of prisoners of war, paid for her medical care.
When McCain – his hair turned prematurely white and his body reduced to little more than a skeleton – was released in March 1973, he told reporters he was overjoyed to see Carol again.
But friends say privately he was ‘appalled’ by the change in her appearance. At first, though, he was kind, assuring her: ‘I don’t look so good myself. It’s fine.’
He bought her a bungalow near the sea in Florida and another former PoW helped him to build a railing so she could pull herself over the dunes to the water.
‘I thought, of course, we would live happily ever after,’ says Carol. But as a war hero, McCain was moving in ever-more elevated circles.
Through Ross Perot, he met Ronald Reagan, then Governor of California. A sympathetic Nancy Reagan took Carol under her wing.
But already the McCains’ marriage had begun to fray. ‘John started carousing and running around with women,’ said Robert Timberg.
McCain has acknowledged that he had girlfriends during this time, without going into details. Some friends blame his dissatisfaction with Carol, but others give some credence to her theory of a mid-life crisis.
He was also fiercely ambitious, but it was clear he would never become an admiral like his illustrious father and grandfather and his thoughts were turning to politics.
In 1979 – while still married to Carol – he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage.
Carol and her children were devastated. ‘It was a complete surprise,’ says Nancy Reynolds, a former Reagan aide.
‘They never displayed any difficulties between themselves. I know the Reagans were quite shocked because they loved and respected both Carol and John.’
Another friend added: ‘Carol didn’t fight him. She felt her infirmity made her an impediment to him. She justified his actions because of all he had gone through. She used to say, “He just wants to make up for lost time.”’
Indeed, to many in their circle the saddest part of the break-up was Carol’s decision to resign herself to losing a man she says she still adores.
Friends confirm she has remained friends with McCain and backed him in all his campaigns. ‘He was very generous to her in the divorce but of course he could afford to be, since he was marrying Cindy,’ one observed.
McCain transferred the Florida beach house to Carol and gave her the right to live in their jointly-owned townhouse in the Washington suburb of Alexandria. He also agreed to pay her alimony and child support.
A former neighbour says she subsequently sold up in Florida and Washington and moved in 2003 to Virginia Beach. He said: ‘My impression was that she found the new place easier to manage as she still has some difficulties walking.’
Meanwhile McCain moved to Arizona with his new bride immediately after their 1980 marriage. There, his new father-in-law gave him a job and introduced him to local businessmen and political powerbrokers who would smooth his passage to Washington via the House of Representatives and Senate.
And yet despite his popularity as a politician, there are those who won’t forget his treatment of his first wife.
Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.
‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.
‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.
‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’
One old friend of the McCains said: ‘Carol always insists she is not bitter, but I think that’s a defence mechanism. She also feels deeply in his debt because in return for her agreement to a divorce, he promised to pay for her medical care for the rest of her life.’
Carol remained resolutely loyal as McCain’s political star rose. She says she agreed to talk to The Mail on Sunday only because she wanted to publicise her support for the man who abandoned her.
Indeed, the old Mercedes that she uses to run errands displays both a disabled badge and a sticker encouraging people to vote for her ex-husband. ‘He’s a good guy,’ she assured us. ‘We are still good friends. He is the best man for president.’
But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.
‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said.
‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’
Additional reporting by Paul Henderson in Virginia Beach and William Lowther in Washington
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