This Weekend on Politically Direct with David Bender 10-05-08
Hi it's David Bender....well she didn't say "I can see Russia from my house," but Sarah Palin's debate performance this week was almost a comedy routine...replete with smiles, winks and the occasional verbal pratfall. This Sunday on Politically Direct, we'll be talking about the Grating Debater with Newsweek's Jonathan Alter as well as with America's greatest man of letters, the incomparable Gore Vidal. All this and your calls, this Sunday on Politically Direct, right here on Air America Radio and Airamerica.com.
You can purchase Jonathan Alter's new book, Between the Lines: A View Inside American Politics, People, and Culture here.
- FILED UNDER: Host Posts, Campaigns
- October 3, 2008
Same sex couples vexations to be endured
Our founding fathers knew what the word tolerant meant. Below a quote from Revolutionary Spirits by Gary Kowalski, pg. 82:
On religious freedom, George Washington said:
"To the Jewish congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, he offered assurances that the government of the United States 'gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance,' ... Significantly, Washington added, that 'it is now no more that toleration is spoken of,' as if religious minorities were merely vexations to be endured by members of a more predominant faith...."
I'm sure there are other groups that Palin tolerates as vexations to be endured.
i agree with tj and gw...
but they owned slaves. nobody is perfect. all politicians lie. all people lie. reality.
yap, palin is trying to move to the center...
typical politician.
The latest shameful attack
I don't know why I'm surprised. I guess I just think that it's impossible to get more disgusting but they always seem to find a way to: Analysis: Palin's words may backfire on McCain.
Palin . . .
Sarah Palin is dangerous. She is a mix of many evils, a "devil with a blue smile." Her greatest threat will come in the future when our nation's collapse is wrongly blamed on the Democrats.
Palin / Bush
David,
What you omitted from the soundscape comparing Palin and Bush is the numerous times that she pronounced "nuclear" exactly the same way Bush does: "nook-yoo-lar".
nook-yoo-lar
Shes "gonna" be "commin" to "kinda" talk bout "nook-yoo-lar"...I "WANNA" vomit!!! (wink, wink)
Health Care Bureaucracy
uhh... isn't there already one of these critters in the form of CIGNA at least for me and whoever you might or might not have. And McCain says Obama is going to CREATE?!? one? What a vacant claim.
I'm personally for H.R. 676 -- Medicare for all. This dilly-dallying around is nuts. Titanic happens to be on the TeeVee while I'm typing this which prompts the obvious comparison that trying to 'reform' the current for-profit health care system is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
It is a definite advantage for the country to have a healthy population. Dividing them up into more than one 'risk-pool' will always cause insurer cherry-picking -- they will rig the landscape in any legislation most likely and make it worse. The maximum benefit for all is to spread this risk to all - Medicare for all. OK with me if this gets tagged Socialistic - what I call it is Practical.
There are several good examples to borrow from - like Germany, Cananda, France, Japan - and yeah, even Cuba and we can't come up with something of our own that will work... that's absurd. This is an appropriate function of Government. Security covers Everyone, Policing covers Everyone, Fire Protection covers Everyone. Would the 'free-market' ideologues argue that we should all purchase insurance for police protection, fire protection etc.
There will always be a tension between pure ideological points of view. For either right-or-left to insist on their own dogmatic purity in all things makes no sense. Determining the best and necessary functions of Gov is the rational approach - and on health care it should be Medicare for all.
Palin
Of whom does Sarah Palin remind me? A Stepford Wife. All the way...
Sarah Palin in the movies
Bob Roberts and Face in the Crowd are excellent but how about All About Eve? John McCain, bless his heart, is Margot Channing.
It was Hillary who brought Bill Ayers into the primary race. Her campaign shopped the story for months to media but it didn't bite. She used the reference in a debate, maybe the ABC debacle.
Iraq
On January 30, 1976, the Supreme Court issued an opinion in Buckley v. Valeo, that the restrictions on political contributions would "necessarily reduce the quantity of expression" and was therefore unconstitutional, ending our egalitarian democracy.
Why do Democrats continue to say that the surge worked? We bribed Sunnis to stop attacking us, trained them as soldiers and then failed to get the Shiia to incorporate them into the Iraq army. We did this by bribing the Sunni to not attack us and training their army.
It looks to me that the surge has failed because it has just created a time bomb that will expload when leave, no matter how long that is!
Alexander Cockburn seems to
Alexander Cockburn seems to be warning progressives and liberals that, after the overwhelming defeat of the Republicans in 2008, Palin may become the next Ronald Reagan. Here is some of what he wrote in his recent CounterPunch Diary:
If John McCain had issued similar denunciations in his debate, and campaigned against the bailout across the last ten days in Washington and voted No in the US senate, his campaign would not now be in a truly desperate situation. Americans are living through the last months of an awful 8-year Republican presidency and McCain has offered them nothing. Crucial “battleground states” like Pennsylvania are tilting decisively towards the Democrats. Only the unknown race factor could trip Obama now.
On present trends, the McCain-Palin ticket is doomed, just as the Republican presidential campaign of another Arizonan senator, Barry Goldwater, was crushed by Lyndon Johnson, in 1964. Yet that defeat was the making of Ronald Reagan, who stole every right-wing Republican heart with his speech for Goldwater in the party convention that year. Two years later, Reagan was governor of California. Twelve years later in 1976, he was challenging an incumbent Republican president, Gerald Ford. In 1980 he won the presidency
More than once, last night, I thought Palin must have been watching re-runs of Reagan’s speeches, though decades of deference to Hollywood tycoons made Reagan far more respectful of Wall Street than the Alaskan governor. Her first national political foray may have only a month to run, but on Thursday night she won herself a long-term political future. Populism comes in many different garments. The bailout, voted through this last week by Obama and Biden and the Democrats, showed the party has lost the capability even of deception, even of the pretence that it is the friend of the working people. (And yes, Palin is the only person on the campaign trail from whose lips I have heard the increasingly unfamiliar term “working class”.) Palin has a lot to learn, but in the years ahead, amid the bankruptcy of the liberal left, her strain of populism will have an eager audience.
As Brecht also wrote, “What happens to the holes when the cheese is gone?” Byron's Mazeppa, quoted by Connolly, gave an answer:
"But time at last makes all things even,
And if we do but watch the hour,
There never yet was human power
That could evade, if unforgiven,
The patient hate and vigil long,
Of those who treasure up a wrong."
www.counterpunch.org
Nuclear power in the Navy
David,
Aircraft carriers and submarines in the Navy are electrically powered via nuclear power. They DO have nuclear reactors on board similar to, though smaller than, those in nuclear power plants.