2008 Vice-Presidential Thread

[corianderstem]

What?

 

[deep]

Sarah Palin went to Germany in 2007.


You probably missed her.

She chose not to give a public speech.


She chose to visit U S soldiers at Landsthul Regional Medical Center in Germany.


The picture was taken by Airman First Class Kenny Holston.

 

[BVS]

Well that settles it, she's ready to be VP.

Why did she go there? Why is there a photo?

 

[martha]

Sarah Palin went to Germany in 2007.

I know a coupla people who went to Germany. Perhaps McCain might want to consider them as well.

I know I feel better knowing our potential Veep has been to Germany before.

And choosing not to make a speech is not equal to being the right candidate.

You're kinda out-of-control as far as she's concerned, deep.

 

[Vincent Vega]

Sarah Palin, governor of the great state of Alaska, didn't do a huge public speech while in my beloved home country of Germany in 2007 way before the first day of the primaries? I am shocked! Outraged even! Almost left speechless.

What has the world come to?

 

[deep]

Well that settles it, she's ready to be VP.

Why did she go there?

Why is there a photo?

Can't say 100 % for sure

but, this seems like it could apply

She went because as Governor she is Commander of the Alaska National Guard.

She went to visit them in Kuwait and then to the Hospital in Germany.

The picture was taken by the soldier in the next bed?


It is not like she went to the wailing wall at 5 a m and had her people put up a banner and used the holy site for a cheap campaign photo op.

I think you said it looked like a photo shop job.

 

[BVS]

The picture was taken by the soldier in the next bed?

How many pictures would soldiers take if you went to go visit?

It is not like she went to the wailing wall at 5 a m and had her people put up a banner and used the holy site for a cheap campaign photo op.

Of course, because she wasn't campaigning.

 

[dazzlingamy]

i like this conspiracy theory! I love how people think its offensive that people are thinking this way. Welcome Mrs Palin! Your life will never be the same!

I also love all the conservatives who were outraged over Jaime Lynn Spears, now has a vice presidential daughter in the same boat. Dirty little minx, where is your abstinence ring?!

 

[Utoo]

The picture was taken by the soldier in the next bed?

He's got a fantastic camera.

 

[MadelynIris]

I also love all the conservatives who were outraged over Jaime Lynn Spears

Who were all those conservatives?

 

[BVS]

Who were all those conservatives?

Anyone who listened to right wing radio got an earfull for awhile...

 

[Vincent Vega]

Can't say 100 % for sure

but, this seems like it could apply

She went because as Governor she is Commander of the Alaska National Guard.

She went to visit them in Kuwait and then to the Hospital in Germany.

The picture was taken by the soldier in the next bed?


It is not like she went to the wailing wall at 5 a m and had her people put up a banner and used the holy site for a cheap campaign photo op.

I think you said it looked like a photo shop job.

Ramstein, which is close to the hospital in Landstuhl, is a stopover for most of the US transportation and governmental flights, so it's no real wonder that after having visited Kuweit, and not being in Berlin because of being in the middle of an election campaign for becoming the next President, she made a stop at the largest US hospital outside the US where most of the soldiers serving around the world are being treated before going back to war or for rehabilitation or reitirement back to the US.

 

[deep]

Ramstein, which is close to the hospital in Landstuhl, is a stopover for most of the US transportation and governmental flights, so it's no real wonder that after having visited Kuweit, and not being in Berlin because of being in the middle of an election campaign for becoming the next President, she made a stop at the largest US hospital outside the US where most of the soldiers serving around the world are being treated before going back to war or for rehabilitation or reitirement back to the US.

And I am sure Biden and McCain have been there also, numerous times.

and many other U S Senators, and Governors that have members of their National Guard recuperating there.

It is too bad the Senator from Illinois did not care enough to visit.

 

[U2isthebest]

And I am sure Biden and McCain have been there also, numerous times.

and many other U S Senators, and Governors that have members of their National Guard recuperating there.

It is too bad the Senator from Illinois did not care enough to visit.

Jessica Simpson visted a military hospital a couple years ago. I wonder why she didn't get nominated for Vice President.

 

[U2isthebest]

And after all, why spend time sponsoring and supporting ridiculous bills like these Veterans | U.S. Senator Barack Obama that are designed to serve the veterans who have bravely served us, when you can just go get a photo op. with them in a hospital?

 

[Irvine511]

It is too bad the Senator from Illinois did not care enough to visit.

Barack Obama doesn't care about our troops.

you're absolutely right.

 

[Diemen]

It is too bad the Senator from Illinois did not care enough to visit.

Saving All Veterans Everywhere Act - Authored by Obama in 2005

Homes for Heroes Act Authored by Obama in 2006

Lane Evans Veterans Health and Benefits Act - reintroduced by Obama in Jan. 2007

So tell me deep, what's more important? Making a couple visits to the troops, or authoring/coauthoring and consistently pushing and fighting for legislation that will tangibly improve the lives and care of veterans?

I realize that doesn't sound as cute as simple misleading little one liners you love so much.

 

[Diemen]

And after all, why spend time sponsoring and supporting ridiculous bills like these Veterans | U.S. Senator Barack Obama that are designed to serve the veterans who have bravely served us, when you can just go get a photo op. with them in a hospital?

Heh. I see we both like google searches.

 

[Irvine511]

Heh. I see we both like google searches.

John McCain clearly wishes he knew how to use The Google.

 

[Se7en]

John McCain clearly wishes he knew how to use The Google.

if he knew anything he'd know it was teh googles.

 

[Diemen]

Nonsense. McCain knew everything that is now out about Palin. His own campaign advisors said as much. It must be true.

 

[phillyfan26]

And I am sure Biden and McCain have been there also, numerous times.

and many other U S Senators, and Governors that have members of their National Guard recuperating there.

It is too bad the Senator from Illinois did not care enough to visit.

You have made it clear you cannot speak rationally on anything involving Barack Obama.

 

[Irvine511]

before we go to far, i do want to say that i continue to adore deep and value his posting in this forum and in all others. i find him funny and ironic an insightful.

we do diverge, greatly, on the topic of Barack Obama.

but i still continue to have my teensy schoolgirl's crush on him.




deep, that is, not Obama. O's too skinny for my taste.

 

[anitram]

And I am sure Biden and McCain have been there also, numerous times.

and many other U S Senators, and Governors that have members of their National Guard recuperating there.

It is too bad the Senator from Illinois did not care enough to visit.

Why did McCain wait for 7 months after Katrina to go to New Orleans? Why has he been there only twice, when Obama has gone 5 times?

It is too bad that the Senator from Arizona did not care enough about black people to visit.

 

[Utoo]

Palin is a great choice for McCain if he wants someone like himself, but she doesn't rectify any of his weaknesses:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/opinion/02brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

John McCain is not a normal conservative. He has instincts, but few abstract convictions about the proper size of government. He’s a traditionalist, but is not energized by the social conservative agenda. As Rush Limbaugh understands, but the Democrats apparently do not, a McCain administration would not be like a Bush administration.

The main axis in McCain’s worldview is not left-right. It’s public service versus narrow self-interest. Throughout his career, he has been drawn to those crusades that enabled him to launch frontal attacks on the concentrated powers of selfishness — whether it was the big money donors who exploited the loose campaign finance system, the earmark specialists in Congress like Alaska’s Don Young and Ted Stevens, the corrupt Pentagon contractors or Jack Abramoff.

When McCain met Sarah Palin last February, he was meeting the rarest of creatures, an American politician who sees the world as he does. Like McCain, Palin does not seem to have an explicit governing philosophy. Her background is socially conservative, but she has not pushed that as governor of Alaska. She seems to find it easier to work with liberal Democrats than the mandarins in her own party.

Instead, she seems to get up in the morning to root out corruption. McCain was meeting a woman who risked her career taking on the corrupt Republican establishment in her own state, who twice defeated the oil companies, who made mortal enemies of the two people McCain has always held up as the carriers of the pork-barrel disease: Young and Stevens.

Many people are conditioned by their life experiences to see this choice of a running mate through the prism of identity politics, but that’s the wrong frame. Sarah Barracuda was picked because she lit up every pattern in McCain’s brain, because she seems so much like himself.

The Palin pick allows McCain to run the way he wants to — not as the old goat running against the fresh upstart, but as the crusader for virtue against the forces of selfishness. It allows him to make cleaning out the Augean stables of Washington the major issue of his campaign.

So my worries about Palin are not (primarily) about her lack of experience. She seems like a marvelous person. She is a dazzling political performer. And she has experienced more of typical American life than either McCain or his opponent. On Monday, an ugly feeding frenzy surrounded her daughter’s pregnancy. But most Americans will understand that this is what happens in real life, that parents and congregations nurture young parents through this sort of thing every day.

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.

There are some issues where the most important job is to rally the armies of decency against the armies of corruption: Confronting Putin, tackling earmarks and reforming the process of government.

But most issues are not confrontations between virtue and vice. Most problems — the ones Barack Obama is sure to focus on like health care reform and economic anxiety — are the product of complex conditions. They require trade-offs and policy expertise. They are not solvable through the mere assertion of sterling character.

McCain is certainly capable of practicing the politics of compromise and coalition-building. He engineered a complex immigration bill with Ted Kennedy and global warming legislation with Joe Lieberman. But if you are going to lead a vast administration as president, it really helps to have a clearly defined governing philosophy, a conscious sense of what government should and shouldn’t do, a set of communicable priorities.

If McCain is elected, he will face conditions tailor-made to foster disorder. He will be leading a divided and philosophically exhausted party. There simply aren’t enough Republican experts left to staff an administration, so he will have to throw together a hodgepodge with independents and Democrats. He will confront Democratic majorities that will be enraged and recriminatory.

On top of these conditions, he will have his own freewheeling qualities: a restless, thrill-seeking personality, a tendency to personalize issues, a tendency to lead life as a string of virtuous crusades.

He really needs someone to impose a policy structure on his moral intuitions. He needs a very senior person who can organize a vast administration and insist that he tame his lone-pilot tendencies and work through the established corridors — the National Security Council, the Domestic Policy Council. He needs a near-equal who can turn his instincts, which are great, into a doctrine that everybody else can predict and understand.

Rob Portman or Bob Gates wouldn’t have been politically exciting, but they are capable of performing those tasks. Palin, for all her gifts, is not. She underlines McCain’s strength without compensating for his weaknesses. The real second fiddle job is still unfilled.

 

[phillyfan26]

before we go to far, i do want to say that i continue to adore deep and value his posting in this forum and in all others. i find him funny and ironic an insightful.

we do diverge, greatly, on the topic of Barack Obama.

but i still continue to have my teensy schoolgirl's crush on him.




deep, that is, not Obama. O's too skinny for my taste.

I too tend to agree with this (though not the schoolgirl crush part). I just think deep has it out for Obama.

 

[Vincent Vega]

And I am sure Biden and McCain have been there also, numerous times.

and many other U S Senators, and Governors that have members of their National Guard recuperating there.

It is too bad the Senator from Illinois did not care enough to visit.

I think the topic has been discussed at the time of the occurrence at length and I honestly didn't see you discussing the reasonable arguments back then.

 

[Carek1230]

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.




The above statement is frightening when the thought of McCain's demise during a term IF he were to be elected President. Palin can't fill the shoes of the Leader of the Free World! Can she even handle her brood of children when the 17 year old finds herself pregnant?

 

[Harry Vest]

My worry about Palin is that she shares McCain’s primary weakness — that she has a tendency to substitute a moral philosophy for a political philosophy.




The above statement is frightening when the thought of McCain's demise during a term IF he were to be elected President. Palin can't fill the shoes of the Leader of the Free World! Can she even handle her brood of children when the 17 year old finds herself pregnant?

This is precisley the kind of stupid statements that may win it for the Republicans. Watch where you tread.

 

[Diemen]

Harry, I have to say your reinvention as a political seer is quite intriguing.