Archive for September, 2008

I’m starting to feel bad for her

I’m starting to think I should just link to youtube and ask you, my faithful readers, to search for ‘sarah palin’.

Let’s just say that the videos of Sarah Palin being incompetent are more numerous than those of her showing some shred of knowledge about any given subject.

I mean COME ON. You could’ve said you read the funny pages in the Anchorage Daily Herald and that Calvin and Hobbes was your world view and had more credibility than whatever that nonsense just was.

Marmaduke.

Anything.

This can’t happen

Ok,

Did you see this past saturday night live? I thought it was pretty dang funny! That Tina Fey is amazing! Didn’t get a chance to see it?

(Skip to about the 3min mark to see the relevant passage)

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/couric-palin-open/704042/

And then I saw the actual interview.

Sarah Palin can’t be President. She is not qualified. I don’t trust her to run my local supermarket, let alone the country. I’m sorry, but there has to be a bar to cross before you can actually make a run for the Presidency.

You know, I am all for telling your kids that they can be President someday. You know, anyone can be President.

As long as that anyone has, at the MINIMUM, a basic knowledge of the issues of the day.

Sarah Palin shouldn’t even be allowed to VISIT the White House at this point.

Please, read this:

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more and put more money into the economy? Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That’s why I say, I like ever American I’m speaking with were ill about this position that we have been put in where it is the tax payers looking to bailout.

But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Helping the — Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief for Americas

And trade we’ve got to see trade as opportunity, not as a competitive scary thing. But 1 in 5 jobs being created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. ALl those things under the umbrella of job creation.

This bailout is a part of that.

Ask yourself this:

Is that the quote from Sarah Palin? Or Tina Fey making fun of Sarah Palin?

please, please PLEASE do not vote for John McCain.

Debate thoughts

We were driving through central Wisconsin during the debate last night. My car’s stereo has developed extremely poor reception. We couldn’t pull in any stations that were covering the debate. So I called up my sister, “Hey, can you put your phone up to the speaker? My stereo isn’t working.” So we drove for about 15 minutes listening to my cell phone on speaker.” That was pretty hard to hear, so Sonja asked if we could connect to the internet on the laptop via the phone. Why, yes, I think we can.

So, driving across central wisconsin, we had the computer using the phone as a bluetooth modem, streaming the debate live from mpr.org, with the headphone output plugged in to a tape adapter in the car.

We caught most of the second half of the debate, and we pulled into the parking lot of a coffee shop to quickly synchronize Google Reader. My initial impression, listening to the debate, was that although Obama was clear, thoughtful, and intelligent, I worried that McCain would be viewed as having “won” the debate. He certainly sounded visceral, aggressive tone on the radio.

After we got unpacked, I opened the laptop again to read through some of the debate reactions. Talking Points Memo and Andrew Sullivan seemed to be more favorable towards Obama than I initally thought. The nytimes article I read was very balanced. Even Fox seemed to think it was basically a draw.

Finally, today, I was able to download a video of highlights from the debate. What a difference seeing the video vs. just hearing it on the radio. Obama looked serious, forceful, very presidential. McCain wouldn’t even look him in the eye! Obama caught him on a number of moments that McCain had obviously hoped to own. The soldier’s bracelet and also the “naivete” lines that McCain had hoped to bag were upstaged by Obama’s comebacks.

So, I’m feeling pretty good now, going into thursday’s VP debate. (Did you see palin on Katie Couric’s show? Wow.) Obama’s team will have learned a few things about how to deal with McCain, and I think that Obama has clearly made great strides as a debater since earlier on in this process.

McCain Skips Letterman

McCain calls Letterman and lies about why he has to miss the show. Definately worth 10 minutes.

Privatize Social Security!

I can’t go anywhere these days without hearing all these Republicans squawking about privatizing Social Security and de-regulating health care.

I mean, you have to hand it to them, it’s worked so well for banking and financial services.

Err…

All of the Sudden

Senator Bernie Sanders:

“For years now, they’ve told us that we can’t afford — that the government providing healthcare to all people is just unimaginable; it can’t be done. We don’t have the money to rebuild our infrastructure. We don’t have the money to wipe out poverty. We can’t do it. But all of a sudden, yeah, we do have $700 billion for a bailout of Wall Street.”

Exactly. via DemocracyNow

Typewriters, baby, typewriters

Why would Republicans, the party of business, want to focus our country on breathing life into a 19th-century technology — fossil fuels — rather than giving birth to a 21st-century technology — renewable energy? As I have argued before, it reminds me of someone who, on the eve of the I.T. revolution — on the eve of PCs and the Internet — is pounding the table for America to make more I.B.M. typewriters and carbon paper. “Typewriters, baby, typewriters.”

Friedman is right on here, once again. I suggest reading his column, Making America Stupid.

I guarantee you this: Reducing our use of fossil fuels is more important than increasing our supply of those same fuels. If we can power our economy in ways that don’t rely on dwindling resources, we will unlock our success in the next century. Future economies, countries, and corporations will be successful in a direct inverse relationship to the amount of fossil fuels they use. I’m going to coin that Colianni’s law. Unless it’s been coined.

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