Biden and Palin and Guns, oh my!

[durgarox]

VP choice reactions?
Biden- unknown, unsure.
Palin- I'm still a bit rankled about how Clinton was treated, but not so much that I'd be willing to vote this chick into office.

Discuss. Seriously. Please?

[Anagaharad]

McCain may have just signed his death warrent when he took palin on as VP.

She has no real qualifications.

Furthermore McCains number one beef with Obama was that he had no experience. He can throw that argument out the window.

[Kute Kitty]

I'm tempted to tell my dad to sign up on here just so he can contribute to this thread.

Then I realise how differently I talk on here compared to how I talk to my dad.

Maybe not.

[Anagaharad]

I predict bad things will happen.

[Kute Kitty]

It seems to me (as an outsider with no vested interest) that both sides are trying to give the sense that they, as a team of president and VP, would bring a balance of youthful energy and the wisdom that age brings. It also seems to me that they therefore can't bash each other for being too old, too young, too inexperienced or too stuck in their ways. They'll just have to discuss the actual issues at hand rather than trying to pick holes in their opposition. What a shame.

[Kieranasa]

Well, I happen to like Palin. She has similar beliefs to mine, though she is pro-war, and I admire how she was elected as a Republican, came into office, and then took on the republican party becuase she did not agree with the "good ole boy" network they had going. I agree that we should drill on American soil. The argument has been brought up to me that we only have enough oil for maybe 40 years. Yes, this is true, but we will have energy better than oil within 40 years. Let's use what we have instead of depending on foreign oil. I am also progun and prolife.

But, when it boils down to it, all you have to do is watch tv for an hour. Go to any news station where the election is being discussed. Pay attention, and see that the media is subtly suggesting Obama. A lot of people who don't pay any attetion will find themself leaning toward him.

I am 100% against Obama. Everythign he talks about promising is already coming along with the democrat ticket, and I have yet to see anything origional to him be brought up. He does write a pretty speech though, which is certain. I am not so quick to jump on the whole global warming bandwagon because, though I see that we are causing a portion of it, I also happen to understand one crucial thing; the sun is a star. It is getting hotter, as stars tend to do. We can only do so much, and we have supposedly passed the point of no return.

Let me also add this: El nino. Remember it? It hit the headlines about 14 years ago....happens every 7 years.......causes the exact same occurances as what is happening with our climate change right now.....Just something to think about.

You don't want to get me started on universal healthcare. Just know that if it is set into place, it will ruin many hospitals around the nation.

[Dismal Dollie]

For most parts, I'm on the opposite side of things from Kieranasa. I like guns and I think a lot of the global warming hype is just that. However, I am opposed to the current American healthcare system. I don't think that universal healthcare is the answer or is even feasible right now, but I like the idea of our children at least being guaranteed some form of healthcare. I'm a Health Promotions and Behaviors major who wants to be a Physician's Assistant--hopefully at the end of this I'll have a Public Health perspective driving my clinical practices, which is in my opinion, the way to go. It's easier to treat someone who is unhealthy than to teach them to be healthy. Money is lost by our big monster health care corporations when people aren't sick or don't believe something is wrong with them . . .

And before I go off on a tangent, I'll go back to subject. I'm Pro-Choice because the world is already over-populated as it is and I don't believe life starts at conception. If we can kill born people in wars we can just as easily kill unborn people in wombs. But the moral issue should not necessarily drive the legal issue, which is an issue of property. Who owns a woman's body? I believe she does. It seems to me Pro-Lifers want to make a woman's body government property by putting laws on it. I'm not okay with that. When a woman's body is not her own it opens the gates for all sorts of laws on what a person can or cannot do to themselves that I'm not comfortable with.

I don't think we should drill on American soil. We won't have alternative energy sources in forty years if people don't start researching, investing, and building those resources *right now*. Any money and environmental integrity lost by trying to keep up our consumeristic society's waste of natural resources is better spent trying to make our communities sustainable. I think I'm a bit on the outside with this mentality, though. Sustainability goes against the American ideal. Our economy can't go on like this forever, and neither can our natural resources. I think we outsource too much. American resources, American jobs, and American money all out the window at this point in an attempt to keep up the "Wal-Mart" economic model. More for less. It plateaus at some point, ya know.

I think Palin is more of an attempt by McCain to bring the focus back to him and away from Obama. She's not experienced enough to run a nation, less experienced than Obama--he was a senator while she was still a mayor. She seems to me to be more of a walking advertisement for McCain than an actual leader: Her seventeen year old daughter is knocked up and keeping the baby, she's an Alaskan governor who wants to drill for oil, ect. She's a pretty face standing up for family values. With McCain's health status as it is, I'm very concerned that if he should fall into a place where he can no longer run our country, she's the woman that will be in charge.

He's playing politics with her. She needs ten more years in the big boy saddle before ponying up to the Presidential race, but she'll at least make enough people go, "WTF is McCain thinking?" to have them take a second glance at his campaign.

I'm voting for Obama. Why? Because we share a lot of the same values. Do I actually fool myself to think he can get most of them through? Of course not. I'm not stupid. Someone's got to at least say it before it can happen, though. Maybe he'll be the first step in the right direction.

[PrincessParadox]

I'd vote for Obama if I were over there. I don't have anything against McCain as a person. For a Republican he's not bad, and I think if (God forbid) he does get elected, he couldn't possible fvck up the economy as much as Bush II has. But I think that between the Bush administrations hate campaign against the ICC, the ongoing fiasco in Iraq and the contempt which Guantanamo Bay shows towards the international rule of law, the US's soft power has been severely depleted in the past 8 years. McCain won't get that back. Obama will.

But Sarah Palin scares the absolute hell out of me. It doesn't often happen, but she gives me goosebumps.

Firstly, it's insulting to intelligent women everywhere that conservative policy-makers thought that because some of us were disappointed over the fact that Clinton didn't get through, we'd automatically flock to a 'token female' with no foreign policy experience (apart from that fact that, you know, Alaska is the closest part of the USA to Russia) and who is proudly anti-choice. It's misogyny thinly veiled as morality. She also wants to ban gay marriage and supports capital punishment. But apparently all us intelligent women out there are going to worship the ground she walks on because we all have ovaries.

Secondly, creationism. Or religion in the public arena in general. Don't get me started on the whole "don't be afraid of information" argument for teaching creationism at school. If you're going to teach creationism as an 'intelligent' alternative to evolution, fine. As long as you teach alchemy as well as chemistry, and phrenology as well as psychology. Because despite the fact that they've been outed as fake sciences, we need more of a balance in our schools, and creating a curriculum based on a book written thousands of years ago and edited through the years to suit whatever the men in power wanted at the time, is the best way of deciding what our children need to learn. Additionally, we need to pray for an oil pipeline in Alaska because "God's will has to get done."

I'm just curious. Does she have a direct phone-line to God? Or is it that he speaks to her in dreams?

I have absolutely nothing against religious people of any creed. Nothing at all. But it p*sses me off hugely when they try to impose their beliefs on others by abusing the executive power of the state. No-one's forcing her, or her daughter, to have an abortion. She shouldn't then turn around and do the same to other women who don't subscribe to the same belief system she does.

Lastly, she supported banning books in the Wasilla library, and then threatened to fire the librarian because she didn't get her own way. An intelligent woman? I think not. I'll find out more information (because I literally just got told then) but anyone who wants so strongly to impose her own beliefs on others, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the White House.

So remember y'all - pray for oil. Because God wants you to.

[Anagaharad]

I have a good one:

Palin: Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States. *


Fact check: Alaska only produced 3.5% of all domestic energy. The only stat CLOSE to what she is talking about is Alaska's oil production. Alaska produces 14% of domestic oil.

Thats still not close to 20%


*quoted from ABC News interview with Charlie Gibson aired 9/11/08

[Anagaharad]

I just saw the goofiest McCain ad. It claimed:

He will raise taxes for middle class families, increase the cost of heating, He is just a celebrity with no new ideas.


From Ap:
"I will make a firm pledge: Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase, not your income tax, not your payroll tax," Obama said

I hardly call people making over $250,000/year "middle class"
I'm lucky if i see $12,000